Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again to speak on this group of motions.
Group No. 5 deals with the auditor general and an information officer being involved in the Canadian Wheat Board. Mr. Speaker, I do not know if you have had these types of mornings when you wake up and feel that everything is going to go your way. As soon as you have had your breakfast, it does not start to happen.
About three years ago I introduced a private members' bill that would put the Canadian Wheat Board under the authority of the auditor general. It was not a votable bill but we did debate it for a while in the House. As I remember, every Liberal member in the House at that time was against that bill. They did not want to have the wheat board audited by the auditor general.
This morning when I picked up the Ottawa paper, I saw that the auditor general had said he hoped that he would be named auditor for the Canadian Wheat Board so that he could, under Bill C-4, work with the reform of the wheat board. That is exactly what I said four years ago. That is what should have happened. That would have put accountability into the wheat board and would have put some kind of trust back into this organization.
A lot of my comments on the wheat board and what I think should have happened to the wheat board have been heard. I would like to read a few quotes from somebody who is not involved in the farming industry, but is a free lance writer in Calgary, George Koch. I hope some people have picked up the article and read it. This is what he says:
Farmers have no way of knowing whether the wheat board is doing its job because it operates in secret. And they have no other recourse—such as a mediator or an ombudsman—against apparently incompetent, abusive or fraudulent actions.
Nor, unlike nearly any other participant in aq modern market economy, do farmers have access to competing services-providers.
That is what farmers want. They want a choice.
Those who skirt the wheat board illegally are taken down by the armed men in black, clapped in irons and charged with offences punishable by imprisonment.
This is what farmers object to. They want the same type of treatment as other farmers in other sections of this country, the same treatment as in Ontario where they run their own board. He then goes on to say:
This has happened to more than 100 farmers so far. Clayton Desrochers, a young farmer in Baldur, Manitoba, who exported his grain in defiance of the wheat board, recently spent his birthday in jail. Brian White, the wheat board's director of marketing, describes people like Mr. Desrochers as `sort of those free men from Montana”'.
Can you imagine the wheat board making comments like that to a farmer who is trying to save his farm? This young man wanted to earn a couple of extra dollars because he could get twice the price for that barley that he was marketing in the U.S. than what the wheat board was willing to pay him. Why would a gentleman lose his farm and go on welfare instead of getting a better price for it?
This gentleman goes on to say:
The wheat board has been called many things: secretive, unaccountable, arrogant, ruthless and incompetent. But the Manitoba case goes to the crux of the matter. If the wheat board does not, in its own mind and in any meaningful sense, represent the interests of farmers and cannot be compelled to do so, why does it exist?”
Why do we have a wheat board if it is not going to represent farmers? Farmers in the last while have thought that maybe the court was the direction that they should go to try to get some fair play into this system, to probably represent their interests and to make the government and the wheat board change their attitude toward farmers.
I was astounded today in the House when, during question period, I heard the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans say in front of this House that the ruling in B.C. on the native fishing industry would not pertain to this House, they would not go by the judgement of the judge or the court, that did not affect this House. How can that be? Is this House above the law of this country? It is astounding.
I just want to read to the hon. members a paragraph out of a paper by Professor Peter Hogg, Q.C.. In his paper he says “Government Liability Assimilating Crown and Subject” says “It has always been a basic assumption of Anglo-Canadian public law that the Crown, that is the government, is subject to the same laws as everyone else. This was a principal element of Dicey's Rule of Law. It reflected a political theory that government ought to be under the law and not just under any law, but the same law that applies to the ordinary citizen. A special regime of law for government can lead to tyranny.' This is exactly what we are experiencing.