Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the Group No. 4 amendments to Bill C-4 at report stage. I will first deal with the amendment concerning a fully elected board. That is what farmers are almost unanimously requesting on the prairies. There is only a halfway elected board being proposed by the minister.
The whole idea of having five appointed members, political hacks sitting on a board which is there ostensibly to serve the interests of Canadian farmers, is absolutely repugnant. With that set up, as long as the minister has his five captive appointees they only have to win the support of three out of ten of elected producer board members and they can do anything they like in, of or for the Canadian Wheat Board. I do not know of any other organization that operates under those parameters.
Why should the board not be fully elected and empowered to elect its own officers? Has the minister's legal training destroyed his faith in the capacity of farmers to manage their own affairs? Does he look upon them as a bunch simple serfs who should bow and tug their earth stained forelocks whenever they approach his eminence or any of his bureaucrats? Farmers are not made that way.
This is a little personal anecdote. On January 20 I attended a grain day meeting with about 200 farmers in Swift Current. It was organized by the Canadian Wheat Board. Most of the 200 farmers present were staunch supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board. I might even say most of them were rabid supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board. The key speaker was Lorne Hehn, the chief commissioner of the board.
When a motion was proposed from the floor that the meeting go on record as favouring the withdrawal of Bill C-4 from consideration, a huge majority voted in favour of that motion. They are wheat board supporters and almost to a man or a woman, they do not want this bill. So much for the results of the minister's vaunted consultation with producers. I would like to know which producers he consulted with and what precisely they produce because he sure was not consulting with the farmers who produce the grain.
I conduct polls on a regular basis because, unlike the people over there, I do like to know the views of my constituents on the issues of the day. In my most recent mail-in poll I asked a very specific question: Would you like me to support or oppose Bill C-4?
Replies are still trickling in. Of the responses I have already received only 23% say they would like me to support this legislation. I know the minister is very well aware that support for the board is stronger in my riding than anywhere else in western Canada but that support clearly does not extend to him or to his ill-conceived legislation which he is trying to ram down the throats of farmers.
Another amendment which is very important, and it also applies to this question of whether or not the board is going to be democratic, is that the fully elected board, not the minister, must control the selection of the president if farmers are going to have any real say in how the board is going to operate. After all it is the guy who has his hands on the levers on a day to day basis who is really going to make the important decisions.
A president cannot act as directed by the farmer elected board of directors if the minister at his own discretion can call for the termination of that man or woman's position. It just does not make any sense. A president who answers in this way to the minister cannot act in the best interests of the corporation or the producers. He can only be a captive of ministerial discretion.
I would like to jump to No. 18 on this list of proposed amendments. The directors and officers must be placed in a position where the duty and care of farmers, the interests of farmers, is their primary purpose, not serving the interests of the corporation.
There was a court case in Manitoba not too long ago wherein it was determined that the board does not have a fiduciary responsibility to farmers. Their responsibility, and this is a clear court decision, is to the board. If we are going to work within those parameters, surely to heaven the board must be responsible to farmers, must be chosen by farmers and must choose its own officers from among farmers. Otherwise we simply continue the same situation where the board and the board alone is at the end of the responsibility road and it has a fiduciary responsibility only to the government.
The board's job under those conditions is not to get the best available price for the farmer's grain. It is to sell the grain in the largest possible volumes as quickly as possible and get it out of its hair. That is a rather absurd way to operate a business enterprise.