Mr. Speaker, if I have misinterpreted the minister, I wish the government would explain itself. When a government or an individual does not abide by the rulings of the court, I think they say they are not subject to the law. That is what is so serious about this statement in the House. I know there are about a hundred court cases right now.
If it should be ruled that these farmers are innocent, the government can just go out and say “Hey, we do not abide by that law. You will still be imprisoned. You will still not be able to market your grain.” What is going on here? This is a democracy.
In the amendments to this bill made by the hon. member for Prince George, B.C., he has tried to make this bill accountable by saying that the wheat board should operate under the auspices of the auditor general and the information act and that they should be able to have an input into how this bill or this act is run. That would make farmers happy. That would make the farmers put their trust back into this wheat board. The majority of farmers want that option. They want to have the option to market their grain at the best price that is available.
If that is not feasible in this bill, I think it will become more divisive and there will be more farmers going against the wheat board. It will probably destroy itself. When I about four years ago did my first press conference, I said that my farmers came with the complaints that they had against the wheat board.
All they wanted was for the government or some agency to look into those allegations to see whether they were right or wrong. They did not want to get rid of the wheat board, they wanted the wheat board to be made accountable.
I asked the solicitor general to do it and members know what happened with that. The farmers laid complaints with the local RCMP. Their complaints were stopped further up the line for some reason or other.
They had evidence that they had been deducted freight and elevation and cleaning charges on their grain to Thunder Bay when it never went to Thunder Bay. It just went right across the border about 10 miles into the U.S.
Not only that, but now we find out not only were they originally charged, they were also charged on the buy-back, again freight to Thunder Bay and cleaning and elevation charges. Those farmers have actually lost $40 a tonne on their grain which is over $1 a bushel.
That is why we, as the Reform Party, want to make the wheat board accountable. We do not want to destroy the wheat board, but we want to make it accountable and answerable to the farmers.
What is wrong with electing 15 directors instead of 10? What is wrong with the farmers being allowed to hire their own CEO and have that board run the way they like it? What is wrong with that? Is that not the way a democracy is supposed to run?
It scares the daylights out of me when I see one part of our industry being subjected to this type of treatment. They do not have the recourse that other industries have.
Some of the automotive dealers in my constituency said “Jake, if you don't stop this nonsense that farmers can't sell their grain for the best price, we're going to start objecting to this issue. If I could not sell my vehicles for the best price or if I could not take in a car in trade that somebody else wanted to get rid of, we would not abide by the law. We would be taking civil disobedience.”
We do not want to see that. We want to have an accountable, democratic system in this country that treats everybody fairly. That is all that farmers in western Canada want. They want to be efficient. They want to be accountable. They want to pay their taxes. They want to have a livelihood that puts food on their table. They want to be treated fairly.
When we look at the efficiencies and the productivity of our agriculture industry, there are none that will come second to us in the world. They have done it under circumstances where they have not had the freedom to get the best price for their products.
What would they be able to accomplish if they had that opportunity to market their grain at the best price that was offered to them? What would they not be able to do when they had a wheat board that was accountable to them, that would look after their interests, that if there were objectionable things going on, if there were irregularities, somebody like the auditor general would look into it.
When I asked the auditor general four years ago to give me an idea how much interest was charged on the debt that taxpayers were probably servicing, he could not do that.
There was no way that he could access the books of the Canadian Wheat Board to see what the interest was. What I found unbelievable when I talked to the auditor general and wanted to know why he could not access the bookssas that he did not know but that he could tell me one thing, that he still had to sign the audit of the Canadian Wheat Board as being correct. Even if he could not look into the books, his signature had to go on that document that it is accurate.
I can see why the auditor general would come out this morning and say that he wished he would be named auditor of the Canadian Wheat Board. That is the direction to go. That is what the amendments in this piece of legislation say. I urge every member in this House to vote for the revamping of this wheat board with the auditor general and the information officer to be part of it.