Mr. Speaker, to begin I would like to address Motion No. 5 of Group No. 4 with respect to the proposed board of directors for the wheat board, of which five members would be appointed.
To make my point, I would like to embark on a bit of a journey in history. In the dying days of the 1993 election campaign, the Progressive Conservative Party made more than 600 political patronage appointments.
The current Prime Minister at that time had a field day criticizing the blatant patronage of the Conservatives, vowing that he would do different, that he would not insult Canadian taxpayers in the same manner as the prime minister of the day.
He said, a direct quote from the 1993 campaign, that the people of Canada will see a big difference with the Liberals in power. Furthermore, he said that the Liberals were elected to serve the people of Canada, not to serve themselves.
If we look at the red book of the time, it said “the Conservatives made a practice of choosing political friends when making thousand of appointments to commissions and agencies, but a Liberal government will review the appointment process to ensure that necessary appointments are made on the basis of competence”.
The reason I gave that bit of history is that is it not amazing that a few years later, in September 1997, the Prime Minister completely reneged on that promise, changed his tune and said that he appoints people from his party. He said “I am not going to name people who are not Liberals”. This is a complete violation of the promises he made both verbally during the campaign and in their campaign book called the red book.
To illustrate my points, I go back to the year following the 1993 election to give examples for the benefit of all the members of the House as well as all Canadians. Jean Robert Gauthier, Liberal MP, Ottawa-Vanier was appointed to the Senate; John Bryden, New Brunswick Liberal organizer and worked for the Prime Minister in the 1993 leadership race and also ran Frank McKenna's election campaigns was appointed to the Senate; Sharon Carstairs, former Liberal leader and Prime Minister loyalist appointed to the Senate; Robert Nixon, former Ontario Liberal Leader and confidant of the current Prime Minister, appointed as chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada; Royce Frith, former Liberal Speaker of the Senate, appointed High Commissioner to Great Britain. I could go on and on but I do not think it would be fitting to occupy the next several days to list the Liberal political patronage appointments.
The proposed board is another source of potential patronage appointments for the government. That is why it does not want to empower the farmers to run their own board of directors of the Canadian Wheat Board. It wants to have appointed positions so that it can continue its “patronage party” which it embarked upon in 1993. The government has shown no signs of slowing up its activity in that regard.
Not only is the minister responsible for the wheat board proposing to control the board through these appointed positions, the chief executive officer would also be appointed. The farmer-elected board of directors would not be able to choose its own chief executive officer. The minister responsible for the wheat board would have that authority. This is a real affront to farmers. It should be embarrassing for the Liberal government.
Every chance I have had, I have spoken to the Bill C-4 amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board. Again today and never in the past has the minister responsible for this bill been here to listen to the concerns of the western grain farmers as conveyed by the members of parliament who represent them.
As I speak, there are three Liberal MPs in the House of Commons.