I hear comments from my colleagues that the minister should resign. I want to put it on record that I support that move. It sounds like a good move. The minister should resign but withdraw the bill before he does that.
We certainly need a stronger, not a weaker, Canadian Wheat Board working for us. Anything less is an abdication of farmers interests to the corporate controls of the artificial international marketplace.
In committee I hope we will look at the legislation in a lot more detail, so I will not be too specific today. However, there are a few matters I want to put on the record while there is still time. I note that in this shortened three hour debate members are allowed 10 minutes whereas there would be longer speeches provided for in a debate at second reading. Many of us would have much more of an opportunity to express our detailed concerns about the bill.
First and foremost is the question of governance. It seems very clear that farmers want more say in how the board is run. There are numerous ways to achieve this goal but the minister and the government have chosen in this legislation to create an elected board of directors with a government appointed chair and a government appointed chief executive officer.
Although the minister says that the vast majority of the board will be elected by producers, the legislation does not say how many members of that board will be elected. So we have some serious problems in dealing with a matter on which there appears to be a general consensus, more farmer control of the board's operation. Not only is there no guarantee that more than a couple of farmers will be elected to the board, but there is no guarantee that their influence will have any value. As long as the government appoints some members to that board and controls the appointments of the Chair and the CEO, the board will not be accountable to producers.
As a representative of Saskatchewan, of New Democrats and of a lot of producers in Saskatchewan, I feel there has to be some assurance of the long term guarantee represented in the legislation. Most of us in Saskatchewan support amendments that make the board more flexible and more responsive to producers, but at the same time we want a better balance between responsibility to producers and fiscal responsibility to the federal government. That needs to be struck.