Has it dealt with accountability? Yes, but it has made it worse as my colleague says.
I refer to section 3.93(1) and read from the bill:
The directors, officers and employees of the Corporation in exercising their powers and performing their duties shall:
(a) act honestly and in good faith-
It talks about what the officers should do. When we read section 3.93(3), it says:
Directors, officers and employees are not liable for a breach of duty under subsection (1) or (2) if they rely in good faith on
(a) financial statements of the Corporation represented to them by an officer of the Corporation or in a written report of the auditor of the Corporation as fairly reflecting the financial condition of the Corporation; or
(b) a report of a lawyer, notary, accountant, engineer, appraiser or other person whose position or profession lends credibility to a statement made by that person.
The bill says they should act honestly. Section 3.94 goes on to state:
The Corporation shall indemnify a present or former director, officer or employee of the Corporation or a person who acts or acted at the request of the Corporation-
It indemnifies former directors or officers or employees. We have to wonder why. I would like to ask the minister why this protection has been given to former officers and directors of the board. To my way of thinking the only reason is that there is something to hide. That subsection certainly cannot be left in the legislation.
Because of time restraints I will go on to my second area of concern. Farmers do not have control over the board. They pay for the operations of the board but they have no control. Has this been changed? The answer is not necessarily. The legislation may not give farmers one bit more control over the board than they have now.
I refer to section 3.6(1) which states:
On the recommendation of the Minister, the Governor in Council may, by order, designate one or more positions on the board to be filled through election by producers in accordance with this section and the regulations.
Does this mean necessarily that even one director will be elected? The answer is no. It is unbelievable. "The minister may decide to have an elected director". That is not what he has been telling farmers.
The minister will probably change that because it certainly will not be tolerated. If that is slapped into place, the backlash from the farm community will be unimaginable. I think the minister can see that and the clause will be removed. However, that does not excuse him for this being in the legislation.
It is one of two things. Either he has intentionally deceived farmers and the public when he said that there would be elected directors, or he is showing incompetence. This is sloppily drafted legislation and that is intolerable. Either one of those two possibilities are completely unacceptable and the minister has to answer to that. Are farmers given more control? Not necessarily.
The third concern is the monopoly, the whole issue of giving farmers a choice. Farmers generally want the wheat board. But they also want to have the choice of marketing through a grain company or on their own. It is a choice that is given to anybody else in the country.
Will the bill give them that choice? Absolutely not. The monopoly power is maintained absolutely and that is unacceptable, especially when we look at how the monopoly was given to the wheat board in the first place.
In the memoirs of Mitchell Sharp, a former Liberal member of Parliament and cabinet minister under the Trudeau government and a close colleague of the Prime Minister, he spoke about when he was a high level civil servant in the finance department during the war in 1943, when under the War Measures Act the Canadian Wheat Board was given its monopoly powers. What did Mitchell Sharp say about that? Every Liberal in the House should read what Mitchell Sharp said. He said that because we were in a situation of war it was reasonable to give the wheat board a monopoly to control the supply for wheat. He acknowledges that it drove prices down. That was the purpose, to drive prices down so the government could afford to help Canada and Britain in the war effort.
What Mr. Sharp said was that he believed at the time, and he still believes, that it was absolutely wrong that this monopoly was kept in place after the war. He believes that it has cost farmers a pile of money.
In particular, he acknowledged that the five year contract that was put in place after the war cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars. That was only allowed because of the monopoly that was given to the board. The farmers have never been compensated for that.
The books are closed. Secrecy is there. The board is unaccountable. The monopoly remains. It makes no sense. It has to be changed and it has to be changed soon. Farmers are absolutely sick and tired of this issue not being dealt with and we have to deal with it.