Mr. Speaker, I am happy to take part in the debate today to discuss Bill C-72 which makes amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act and to move those discussions to committee.
My son and I and our families operate a 1,500 acre grain farm in Alberta in part of the area designated to be under the Canadian Wheat Board. I have a lot of colleagues on this side of the House who are farmers as well and who have experienced firsthand the Canadian Wheat Board's operation. It always amuses me to hear speakers, like the hon. member from Ontario who spoke just before me, express their views on how great it is under the Canadian Wheat Board when they have not had any actual experience under the board. Ontario is exempt from being under the Canadian Wheat Board operations, and I know there is another member from Ontario ready to speak here.
Between the members who are not under the board's operation and the lawyers from the other side who extol its great virtues, it seems they are being a little hypocritical. If it is so good, why does the Canadian Wheat Board not operate in Ontario and Quebec as well?
Bill C-72 has been very badly drafted. It will enhance the control and the power of the minister of agriculture. That is exactly the opposite of what is wanted in the agricultural community currently under the Canadian Wheat Board. It is so bad that I think the minister should resign. It is not just for this reason. The minister has established a clear record in the past three and a half years since he has come to this Parliament and become the minister of agriculture. I will go through items and I suggest that he has failed on every account. He has made those on all sides of this issue angry at him for the way he has handled the amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board and the whole marketing debate throughout the prairies.
Some historical background is necessary in order to talk about the Canadian Wheat Board with some knowledge. The Canadian Wheat Board was established in 1917 during the first world war as a war measures act. I can understand quite fully why that would be. In a war you want control over food supply. We had some commitments to Britain at the time and we wanted to have stable prices during wartime.
After the first world war the Canadian Wheat Board was disbanded as it should have been. The grain trade operated in a free market economy until 1935 when the Canadian Wheat Board was re-established. It was brought back as a dual market with private grain trade. It operated in that way for eight years until the beginning of the second world war. At the height of the second world war, in 1943, the Liberal government decided that the Canadian Wheat Board should be brought back in a monopoly capacity. There again was the factor of war conditions.
I support the move that was made at that time. We were supplying grain to Britain again. We were supplying grain to our allies. We wanted the price to be kept down in order to support the war effort.
However, after the war other factors became involved. There were some five-year contracts. As one of my colleagues said earlier, Mitchell Sharp, who has been a minister in government, has been quite critical of the fact that the board continued as a single desk agency when it was not required after the war.
That sets the context for the debate that has taken place in western Canada for the past several years. The debate is all about marketing choice. Some farmers want to pool their products, have the Canadian Wheat Board do their marketing for them and accept an average price. Farmers on the other side of the issue want to market their own grain. They think they can do better than the board is doing. They have their own special needs. It may be that they have a big farm payment to make at a certain time of the year and need cash flow when some of their neighbours may not need it.
That is the debate that is taking place. It is a matter of whether we should have complete restrictive measures and marketing through the Canadian Wheat Board or whether there should be choice. I understand fully both sides of the issue. We live in a free democratic country and my belief is that farmers should be given the choice to either haul to the Canadian Wheat Board and accept an average price or to go on their own. I suggest that farmers will decide with their produce which system they like best. I think it should be left that way.
This is the background to that issue. In the last three years, the Liberal government has taken away the subsidized Crow freight rate even though our competitors have not removed subsidies to the same extent that this government has. We have moved faster than all our international obligations suggest we need to. These days
farmers are paying the full cost of freight. As such, they have had to scramble to try to find the best possible market prices in order to survive. Many of them are doing just that.
However, I suggest that the minister of agriculture is tying one hand behind the back of those farmers who want to survive. He is suggesting that the farmers simply could not market their wheat and barley internationally. He is saying that it is not possible. I think he is actually suggesting that farmers are not smart enough to do that.
Let us look at the facts. I farm myself. We market a number of products and my neighbours market a number of products already and there are companies out there that facilitate that. Canola is right up there in terms of dollar value with wheat as to which is the biggest export outside the country in dollar value per year. Canola is not marketed through the Canadian Wheat Board. Peas are not marketed through the Canadian Wheat Board. Farmers are marketing these products: fescue, clover, flax, rye, lentils. The list goes on. They are marketing beef. There has been a 40 per cent increase in the export of beef since the free trade agreement. The wheat board does not have to do that. There is no monopoly situation. It is a market economy.
For those who want to market through the Canadian Wheat Board and accept a pooled average and not have to do their own research and marketing, I suggest they keep that method in place. However, for those who do not want to market through the wheat board but want to look for other alternatives, that should be a matter of choice.
This brings us to the current round, 1993. Let us go through the list. Besides losing the Crow rate, the minister decided to increase pressure on the grain marketing debate and set up a grain marketing panel about a year and a half ago. This was a hand-picked Liberal panel. The chairman of the panel is a Liberal buddy of the minister of agriculture. I am sure the minister thought this guy would do what he wanted and come up with a favourable report. In fact, I think maybe that was the original plan.
However, once farmers and farm groups started making presentations to the panel, the members of the panel had their eyes opened up. In fact, there was so much demand for the panel to travel to different parts of the country that it had to finally agree to go to Edmonton and Regina. It was just going to hold hearings in Winnipeg.
In my riding, a group in the Grand Prairie-Peace River area said it did not make sense travelling to Winnipeg to make a presentation to the committee. Surely the committee should be out listening to the farmers in their communities. Some kind of compromise was reached and the panel ended up going to Edmonton. The panel was not even anticipating that in the beginning. However, there was so much pressure from producers that is what happened.
Members of the panel had their eyes opened up and, to their credit, they wrote a credible report suggesting that compromises be reached in certain areas and a consensus be reached in certain areas. They then made a series of recommendations. However, the minister of agriculture did not comply with those recommendations. In fact, he even refused to meet with the panel to discuss its recommendations. That is how contemptuous he was because the panel did not write the kind of report he wanted.
Further to that, the panel had recommended that barley should be outside the Canadian Wheat Board. However, the minister could not accept that and decided to hold his own vote. He knew from an Angus Reid poll he had taken earlier that farmers wanted a choice in how they marketed their barley.
He knew he could not ask the farmers whether they wanted a choice in how they marketed their barley because he would lose and that was not what he wanted. Therefore, he designed a question that was all or nothing: Do you want to deal with the Canadian Wheat Board on all sales of barley, malt or feed grain, or do you want to have the board not involved in any of that and deal with the entire free market?
That is not the debate that is taking place out there and this ballot, when it is finally tallied and the minister gets the result he wants, simply will not end the debate because it has not addressed the real issue.