moved:
Motion No. 47
That Bill C-4, in Clause 36, be amended by deleting lines 6 to 21 on page 24.
Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure for me to get up and address the group 5 amendments to Bill C-4, the Canadian Wheat Board Act.
At the outset of my remarks directed at the group 5 amendments, I would note that a lot of the comments we have just heard from the government side really indicate, as the member from Vancouver just indicated, how little the Liberals actually understand their own piece of legislation. I do not believe the comments over the past half hour indicate that they have even read the amendments we are supposed to be debating.
Indeed the parliamentary secretary, when he rose a few minutes ago, spoke for his 10 minute allotment and never once mentioned the amendments. All he did was rant and rail against Reform's trying to raise issues on behalf of Canadian farmers.
As with the other groups, there are a number of amendments in group 5, about 16 or 17. Obviously no individual speaker trying to address 16 or 17 substantive amendments to a piece of legislation can do them justice in a mere 10 minute speech. However, I will try to direct my comments at some and bring up some other issues about Bill C-4 that I feel are relevant.
One of the amendments contained in group 5 is Motion No. 22. This commits the Canadian Wheat Board to operating in the best interest of farmers. Previously the Canadian Wheat Board has simply been committed to orderly marketing. A lot of my colleagues remarked about that during their recent presentations today and the fact that it follows up on a previous amendment, I believe Motion No. 1, proposed by my colleague from Yorkton—Melville, which was to add a preamble to the bill that would kind of set the stage for the legislation itself and the fact that the Canadian Wheat Board Act should be there to operate in the best interest of the farmers who fall under the act. That would make sense.
Motion No. 22 put forward my me on behalf of the official opposition would do exactly that. It would require that the Canadian Wheat Board operate in the best interest of the producers, not necessarily just to conduct orderly marketing of grain, which might often be in direct conflict to what would be in the best interest of producers.
Also in group 5 there are a couple of other motions, 28 and 29, put forward by my colleague from Yorkton—Melville, which are also substantive amendments that go toward ensuring that the Canadian Wheat Board operates in the best interest of farmers.
I would like to digress for a moment and talk about a question of privilege I raised a while back that was ruled on by the Speaker. I am not here tonight, especially at this late hour, to debate, nor do I even have the right to debate, that ruling. I am quite willing to acknowledge that the Speaker ruled on that question of privilege, but I would like to raise the issue because I have had no opportunity up until now to reply to the minister's statements connected to that question. The minister's argument for holding a meeting in Regina and having farm groups come to it over the Christmas break was that he was merely doing the same as I and my Reform colleagues. He was merely exercising his MP right to consult with Canadians about a piece of legislation, which is completely understandable.
However, I submit that is simply hogwash. The farm groups that went to that meeting told me that he had no intention to consult on anything concerning the bill.
The intention was to talk about the election of the directors, how you would go about electing the board of directors. In other words, once Bill C-4 is enacted, is passed into law, there will have to be regulations brought forward, as there is for all legislation once it is passed into law. He was merely there to try and get input into regulations.
My point, and I still believe this is relevant, is how a minister of the crown could conduct himself in a fashion that would lead one to believe the bill is already law. We are not going to talk about amendments as to how many directors should be elected versus appointed. We do not want to talk about that. We want to talk about how to actually accomplish the election.
I do not think that is right, and I believe most farmers do not think that is right. That is why the majority of the farm organizations at that meeting walked out in total disgust. Another farm group, I believe it was the National Farmers Union, was protesting outside the building where the meeting was being held.
There is another point I would like to make in the time I have left. In the debate today on the Group No. 4 amendments, by my calculations 19 Reform members of Parliament, four Liberals, one Bloc and a couple of NDP spoke to those amendments. The hon. member from the Progressive Conservatives says that he spoke. He did, as I did. He spoke in November when we adjourned the debate on the Group No. 4 amendments. I was referring to today. I think my numbers are fairly accurate.
What we are saying on this side is not that the government members should not be speaking, should not be standing in their place and addressing the substantive amendments. We are saying that they should be. Only four of them spoke, and as I already noted, one of them, the parliamentary secretary, did not talk about the amendments at all. All he did was rant and rave against those darn Reformers, how dare they use up time actually talking about legislation. What a concept, that we are actually here in this place to talk about legislation. How dare we. It boggles the mind.
Mr. Speaker, I could go on for hours, but I believe I only have two and a half minutes left.
I will wrap up the last couple of minutes of my much too brief talk on Motion No. 32. What would Motion No. 32 accomplish were it to be passed? Were the hon. members actually to read it, to try and understand it, to try and understand where western farmers are coming from on this issue, and actually vote for an amendment based on common sense versus how they are told to vote, Motion No. 32 would have the Canadian Wheat Board come under the auditor general so that he could actually perform an audit.
Interestingly enough, on the front page of today's Hill Times there is a story on how the auditor general had been requesting to audit the new CPP fund that is going to be set up under Bill C-2. As well he wanted to audit the Canadian Wheat Board under Bill C-4. That is exactly what this Reform amendment would accomplish.
As well it would bring the Canadian Wheat Board under access to information so that there would be true transparency. Western Canadian farmers—quite a number of whom I might add reside right here in the Reform ranks—could see what the Canadian Wheat Board was doing. They could put forward access to information requests and find out exactly what decisions were being made by the Canadian Wheat Board. I believe that makes sense.
I believe that when it comes to the votes on the report stage amendments what we are going to find is that the trained seals over there—and they have already used that term tonight directed at themselves and I am merely agreeing with them—will vote down these substantive amendments without giving them any thought whatsoever merely because somebody over there has told them how to vote.