Mr. Speaker, just an observation at the outset. While we very much in this corner of the House oppose what the government has done today by invoking time allocation, it is interesting to note how quickly the debate is now going through once time allocation has been proceeded with.
We have been dealing with these groups of amendments for several days. It seems, by my calculation, to be taking slightly over a day to get through one group. We started at group 5 a couple of hours ago and now we are in the seventh and final group. It seems the Reform Party, which put up 19 or 20 speakers, is able to rush out and say look, the government forced us into time allocation and are they not a horrible group of people. Reform has the thing through. It won what it thinks it will be able to carry out to the farmers. It is a sham and a shame.
Group 7, the one we want to zero in on this afternoon, is the inclusion the clause. As the previous speaker indicated, our caucus does support the inclusion clause. We want to explain why we support the clause.
The previous bill allowed farmers to decide in a vote to remove or exclude grains from the board's authority. It seems to us that it is only fair, normal and natural that farmers can also vote to add additional grains. I stress that such an inclusion of a grain besides wheat and barley would occur only after a vote of farmers and/or producers. That is democracy in its truest form.
There has been a great deal of concern how a vote to include a grain would be actually triggered.
As the legislation stands a farm group would have to seek conclusion. The minister would then decide if the group was sufficiently representative of producers of the commodity in question. Only then would a vote occur.
Our proposal in Motion No. 44 was actually suggested by the minister of agriculture for the province of Saskatchewan when he appeared before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food last fall. We proposed that the process to include a grain be exactly the same as that of excluding a grain; that the board of directors of the wheat board ask for it; and that, if they do, farmers would then vote on it. This would streamline the process for the inclusion of a new grain and make it less divisive than we think the legislation before us now proposes.
We believe these are sensible and moderate propositions quite in contrast to the venom which has been spread in recent months by the so-called coalition against Bill C-4. The activities of this coalition are nothing more than an undisguised frontal attack on the Canadian Wheat Board. The coalition is trying to do through the back door what it failed to do through the democratic process.
I just want to run through its demands. The coalition continues to insist that barley be dropped from the wheat board's jurisdiction. As my colleague from Regina indicated a few minutes ago, farmers voted on that question in 1997. Some 63% of them voted in favour of keeping barley under the board's jurisdiction, notwithstanding the $1 million the Alberta government put up in paid advertising to try to ensure the vote would go against keeping barley within the CWB.
The coalition is also demanding cash buying and dual marketing as has been noted earlier. In our humble opinion and in the opinion of Judge Muldoon from Alberta that is nothing more than a prescription for doing away with the wheat board. It is something that farmers have rejected as recently as 11 months ago.
The coalition and its Reform partners are demanding that the inclusion clause for grains be dropped altogether from the bill. Who is it who wants barley out from the wheat board jurisdiction in the inclusion clause? We heard the previous speaker, the Reform agriculture critic, talk about some of those groups. I do not think he mentioned all of them. I just want to make sure we get them all in. Most of the faxes that arrived in my office carried the identification of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a well known farm group.
What other bona fide farm organizations belong to this unholy coalition? The Winnipeg Commodity Exchange. I do not think I heard the member make reference to the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange. The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce has big farmers out there. The oilseed producers which includes Cargill and unofficially the Reform Party.
We say to these corporate interests and to the Reform Party that a debate about the wheat board is a debate for farmers and not a vote for corporations.
Let us compare the coalition to one group that supports the inclusion clause, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, arguably the largest farm organization in Canada and an organization that has the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool as a member. Other supporters of the inclusion clause include Wild Rose Agricultural Producers from Alberta, not the member for Wild Rose but the agricultural producers of Wild Rose; the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, which represents more than 200,000 rural taxpayers; and the Government of Saskatchewan. The previous speaker noted that Premiers Klein and Filmon had written to the minister responsible for the wheat board. Let the record show that the premier of Saskatchewan has recently written, urging that the inclusion clause remain in the bill.
We ask the Reform Party and the agribusiness lobby why they are worried about a possible producer vote to include grain, a party that talks constantly about plebiscites and referendums? Let the farmers decide. New Democrats have always supported the wheat board because it works in the best interest of farmers. That is why we support the inclusion clause.
Just before I take my place, I want to respond to something that was said by the member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley who assured the House that the NDP would be supporting Bill C-4. I want the record to show, as I said during debate on Group No. 5, that the minister responsible for the wheat board has done the impossible. He has all opposition parties offside on this legislation.
At this point in time we will be voting against Bill C-4 as it now stands.