Mr. Speaker, despite the late hour it is a pleasure to rise tonight to address the Senate amendments to Bill C-4, an act to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.
Before I get into the thrust of the Senate amendments I would like to address the process by which we find ourselves at this point this evening. I feel very strongly that it is a faulty process. We have seen that despite the pleas of western Canadian grain farmers upon which the bill will impact tremendously their concerns have largely gone unheeded by the government. The process by which the legislation has moved through parliament is very faulty.
If we look back to the early days of the 36th Parliament we find a commitment by the hon. minister for the Canadian Wheat Board and Natural Resources to bring forward the bill very early in the new mandate following the last election, and he did so. I think the bill came in, in early October. With the new process it moved directly to committee stage rather than having second reading debate, despite the fact that the majority of the opposition members in the House of Commons received a substantial amount of correspondence from western Canadian grain farmers about their concerns with the legislation. Despite that the government moved it directly to committee.
That process in itself is supposedly to allow more time at committee, more time in which to consider substantive amendments, more time in which to receive witnesses' testimony, more time in which members of all the various parties can cross-examine witnesses at committee stage. Yet what we found was an accelerated process even at committee.
The government with its majority on the standing committee for agriculture moved the bill very rapidly through the committee stage and back to the House for report stage. Sensing this, the opposition parties held back their amendments rather than put them forward at committee stage and see them voted down with very little attention paid to them and put forward at report stage.
Unbeknownst to us what we saw, unfortunately for western Canadian farmers, was that the government moved very quickly once it came back to the House for report stage and brought in time allocation to shut down further debate despite the fact that we had not had substantive debate at committee.
We see a process that is deeply flawed and the government is not listening to concerns of farmers. Despite the fact that there were some 48 amendments brought by the four opposition parties at report stage in the House of Commons, of which about 30 were from the official opposition, they were voted down. They received very little time in debate because of the government's move to bring in time allocation.
We saw very substantive amendments such as Motion No. 1 which would have amended the preamble to the bill to ensure that the newly structured Canadian Wheat Board would act and govern itself in the best interest of farmers. We saw amendments such as the one put forward that would have removed references to the president as a member of the board of directors so that the board of directors would have the power to hire and fire the president and CEO rather than that power resting with the minister as it currently does in the bill.
We saw amendments to make the 15 member board of directors fully elected rather than the existing 10 of 15 elected with the other 5 appointed by the minister voted down by the government. The list goes on. Substantive amendments were brought forward not only by the official opposition, by the Reform Party, but by all opposition parties. It was noted at the time during the abbreviated debate that probably nowhere else in the history of agricultural legislation had a government managed to anger everyone across the full spectrum dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board.
We saw people from every aspect who were deeply upset with the legislation and the fact that the government was not listening to the concerns of farmers and forging ahead with it despite their wish to see amendments brought forward. The amendments that were put forward by the opposition were in direct reply to the concerns we heard expressed both at committee and in correspondence and direct communication with farm groups.
During the presentation of the member for Brandon—Souris on Monday evening when Bill C-4 was before the House he expressed his opinion that the Reform Party and I had contradicted ourselves by criticizing the Senate amendments.
We have to look at what these amendments are to accomplish. The official opposition as well as all opposition members as soon as Bill C-4 went from the House of Commons to the Senate encouraged the Senate to hold hearings in western Canada to hear directly from western Canadian farmers about their concerns with the legislation. The Senate to its credit did that.
When I was criticizing the Senate for the end result I was not criticizing the fact that it undertook the process of at least going out to hear from farmers. Unfortunately it did not listen to them and bring forward the amendments that farmers are deeply seeking.
I come back to the single biggest flaw in the legislation over and over again. It is the lack of freedom of choice. Under Bill C-4 farmers will continue to be heavily fined or even thrown in jail if they cross the U.S. border to market their grain. This is unlike options that will soon be available to Ontario grain producers.
One must question why the double standard. Reformers have been doing that consistently and certainly western Canadian farmers have been doing that consistently. Why is there one set of rules for Ontario grain farmers and a totally different one for western grain farmers?
This fundamental flaw with this legislation and with the operation of the Canadian Wheat Board will result in the divisiveness continuing. The elections this bill will put in place for those 10 producer positions on the board of directors will end up simply in a battle between producers who are pro single desk selling, favour the present mandatory system, the status quo, and those producers who favour greater freedom of choice, democracy and a fully voluntary wheat board.
We will end up having elections whereby farmers probably will be casting their ballots not for the candidate they believe brings the greatest skills and expertise to managing a $6 billion a year enterprise but rather for a single issue. Are they in favour of maintaining the single desk selling structure of the Canadian Wheat Board or are they in favour of greater freedom of choice and looking at options that will allow farmers to market some or all their grain outside of the Canadian Wheat Board? I think it is unfortunate that farmers will have to make that choice when they go to the ballot boxes, likely this fall, and vote for these 10 producer positions.
The standing Senate committee on agriculture and forestry tabled its report on Bill C-4 on Thursday, May 21 after spending thousands of taxpayer dollars travelling across western Canada to hear what farmers thought of the legislation. I have referred to that and I actually applaud the Senate's initiative to get that feedback.
It became very clear throughout the hearings, even to some senators, that the majority of farmers were unhappy with the legislation. Farmers told senators they wanted more marketing options outside the Canadian Wheat Board and that the inclusion clause allowing for more grains to come under the Canadian Wheat Board's jurisdiction had to go.
While some farmers were optimistic that the Senate would propose substantial changes to reflect this testimony, the Senate proved yet again that it is simply a puppet controlled by the government.
I intend later in my presentation to move some subamendments to the five Senate amendments.
Of the Senate amendments brought forward the first amendment is consequential to the second and the second will really require that the minister consult with the board of directors on the appointment of the president and CEO. The minister still retains the power to arbitrarily appoint the president for the first year after the changes come into effect.
We believe, and we made these amendments when the bill was before the House before, that it should be the board of directors with total control of appointing or ultimately have the power to fire the CEO and president if that person is not doing their job.
I will be proposing a subamendment to this that would turn this thing around and ensure that it is the board of directors that has that power and that it must consult with the minister before it appoints the CEO, not the other way around.
The third Senate amendment deals with the auditor general. This too was an amendment brought forward by the Reform Party to open up the Canadian Wheat Board to audits by the auditor general and to the Access to Information Act.
We have repeatedly demanded that the Canadian Wheat Board open its books to the auditor general. We applaud this as a tentative first step. Here too there are some great deficiencies in what actually has taken place with the way this amendment is worded. This amendment does not stipulate that the auditor general must make his findings public. A report made simply to the minister is ineffective and inadequate. This is a one time opportunity. No further audits are stipulated. In addition, the amendment does not specify which year or years of the Canadian Wheat Board operations the auditor general is to audit. Conceivably the focus of the audit could be 20 years ago and nothing more recent.
When consulted by opposition MPs about this amendment the auditor general's office wrote a letter to the minister for the Canadian Wheat Board outlining his concerns with this amendment. Legal counsel at the auditor general's office were uncertain how this amendment would actually fit into the mandate and legislation governing the operations of the auditor general. The letter expressed concern that the apparent intent of the amendment as drafted would not provide a great deal of value for the money.
I too will be presenting a subamendment which will if passed ensure that the auditor general has an ongoing role to play in auditing the Canadian Wheat Board and ensure that he has the greatest amount of flexibility in how he conducts those audits, and ensure further that he reports as he should and as he does in other cases to parliament and not simply to the corporation and to the minister responsible.
The last two amendments the Senate brought forward deal with the exclusion and inclusion clauses. The fourth amendment is with the exclusion and the fifth the inclusion, and they are consequential with one another. Here too what we see is the Senate has merely reverted to basically the status quo and added one small hurdle where the minister would have to consult and hold a plebiscite were he to include any new grains.
We have already heard over and over again how farmers feel about this prospect, as slim as it might be, that there would be additional inclusion of other commodities under the Canadian Wheat Board's mandate. It is simply unacceptable. Once again I will be moving a subamendment.
I could go on to talk about some recommendations that the Senate made in addition to these amendments, but I do not have the time. Therefore I will get to my subamendments.
The recommendations are not binding whatsoever on the government or on the minister. That is a great flaw as well. I think some of the recommendations have some merit and I have said that publicly. But they are merely that, recommendations. They are not amendments. Farmers in particular in western Canada should clearly understand that. The recommendations dealing with the electoral process for dividing up the election of the directors is on a geographic basis and the amendments dealing with the contingency fund cap are just recommendations. They may or may not be acted on.
That brings me to moving my subamendments. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint their honours that this House agrees to amendments number 1 and 4, made by the Senate to Bill C-4, an act to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, and this House agrees with the principles set out in amendments number 2, 3 and 5, but would propose the following amendment:
Amendment 2 be amended by replacing all the words in section 3.09(1) with the words “The president is appointed by the governor in council on the recommendation of the board of the directors and holds office during pleasure for the term that the board of directors may determine.” and by replacing the word “Minister” in section 3.09(2) and 3.09(2)(a) with the word “board” and replace the word “board” in section 3.09(2)(a) with the word “Minister”;
Amendment 3 be amended by replacing all the words in the first paragraph with the words “Within two years after the day this section comes into force, the Auditor General of Canada shall commence auditing the accounts, financial transactions, information management systems and management practices of the corporation for such fiscal years as the auditor general considers appropriate and reports of those audits shall be made to the corporation, the minister and parliament”; and
Amendment 5 is amended by adding to section 5 the following: “(c) producer participation in the Canadian Wheat Board is voluntary”.
In other words, amendment No. 5 would not pass and it would not be allowed under any circumstances to include more commodities under the Canadian Wheat Board until such time as the Canadian Wheat Board is voluntary.