Debates of June 10th, 1998

Canadian Wheat Board Act

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

The court case has been settled. The appeal board had ruled that the Canadian Wheat Board had no mandate to sell grain for the best price. The only mandate it had was to orderly market my grain.

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Lakeland, AB]

Whatever that means.

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Whatever that means. I was prepared and I have sunk thousands of dollars into it to get the truth out of that court case. We are still battling over trying to get it before a judge so he can decide what the facts are. It is to be appealed again, and the minister knows it. That stubborn farmer from western Canada does not give up so easy. He wants the truth. Farmers want the truth.

I heard the member for Malpeque say that the farmers were playing into the hands of the major grain companies, those bad rascals, those wolves or whatever they are. I have grown special crops since 1957. I do not know for what reason but these terrible grain companies, these terrible special crops industries. have always made me more money than wheat board grains. If I had not grown the special crops I would have been bankrupt in the first 10 years. If these terrible grain companies are that miserable toward farmers, why are they getting more instead of less acres every year? Why are they selling a bigger portion of western Canadian farmers' products than they ever have before?

If we look at the price of canola today when we grew record acres last year, it is still close to $9 a bushel. What would people on the other side do if we did not have special crops? They would be sending out subsidies to no end if they wanted to keep the farmers on the land. They should realize that.

I just talked to the minister a few minutes ago to see whether he received the phone call I received yesterday. About 10 o'clock when I was waiting to debate in the House the phone rang and it was a gentleman from the States. According to the wheat board minister the call was probably from Pennsylvania.

The caller needed three truckloads of organic white, hard wheat. He said he had to have it because that wheat was not available in Montana or Washington. When it comes into production it is not the quality of wheat that we grow in Saskatchewan and Alberta. He could not get it because the producer would not go to the wheat board for an export permit because it wants an extra 70 cents to $1 a bushel to put in the pool, and it does absolutely nothing with it. He is fed up with this malarkey. The wheat board will not buy it, move it or market it, but it wants a $1 a bushel for saying it is the wheat board. Does that make any sense? It does not make sense at all.

We are taking money out of the western economy, money that could be coming in.

[Mac Harb, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Rubbish.

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

If the member does not want to believe it, he can talk to every farmer from the Ontario-Manitoba border to British Columbia. They will tell him that they will need more funds. They cannot make ends meet. If we do not do something to increase the prices of grain or the income of farmers, the government will have a catastrophe on its hands like it has never seen before. Why not let them market their grain if they can get a better price?

I am astounded that as politicians we cannot listen to people when they tell us what is wrong. We have been across western Canada twice listening to the farmers. The Senate has been across western Canada. The farmers want a choice. I can guarantee the House that if it were a voluntary wheat board and there was trust in the wheat board it would market more wheat board grains than it would probably market special crops grains. It has been proven in other areas. They do not have accountability or trust. They do not want to listen to what farmers tell them.

If the wheat board did the job like it is claiming to do, it should have absolutely no objection to the auditor general looking at the books.

If there is nothing to hide why are we fighting tooth and nail to allow the auditor general to audit the books? To me there is something wrong. If Revenue Canada does not trust me it can audit my books. Since I started criticizing the wheat board and demanding accountability I have not had a five year audit but an audit every year. Is that not strange? All my life I was never audited until I started objecting to the practices of the Canadian Wheat Board. Tell me what is the problem.

If Revenue Canada found out that I had violated the law I would expect it to prosecute. Is that why the wheat board is hesitant to allow anybody to look into its books? If it is honest and if its books are in order it should have no problem with them being audited.

[An hon. member]

What did Deloitte & Touche do?

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Deloitte & Touche legs eggs and we know what happened to what lays golden eggs. Who killed it? Who killed the goose?

Deloitte & Touche is a tremendous firm. Nobody said that Deloitte & Touche was not doing its job, but it can only audit what it is given to audit. I would like to ask the hon. member why, if Deloitte & Touche has done such a tremendous job, the trading activities under the commodity exchanges were not listed in that report? Why are they not in the report? For years the Canadian Wheat Board has denied that it uses commodity exchanges. I can show all sorts of records. There is no gambling or speculating. That is too bad.

All of a sudden we hear testimony before the Senate hearings saying that it is the biggest player on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. It plays as much as we can. It will not allow farmers to do it. Why is that not recorded in its accounts?

I wrote the commissioner a letter asking for the annual statement of the trading activities of the wheat board. I also asked the minister for it. I have not received it yet. I would like to see it. There are all kinds of speculation that things are not quite on the level. The problem is that the suspicion is there and farmers will not deal with suspicion any more. They want facts and guarantees because they are not making enough money from wheat board grains.

I have another little story about the last couple of months. Farmers have been thrown in jail for exporting grain without export permits. Suddenly last winter I got complaints left and right that the Canadian grain companies were buying and milling wheat as off board feed wheat and that it was disappearing. I said that I could not do anything, that I needed facts, figures and documents. One farmer came forward with documents in black and white. There was a dollar a bushel premium for off board feed wheat compared with ordinary off board feed wheat.

I said that was illegal. That was not just breaking the wheat board act but the Canadian Grain Commission Act. It cannot distort grains. It has to pay the price at which it is graded. I said “Now I have something”. Then I got a phone call from a farmer who said “Jake, please don't use the information”. I asked him why. I told him that we could tackle the problem. He said “I don't know what my neighbours are going to do to me. They will burn me out”.

I took it to the assistant commissioner of the RCMP whom I had contracted as a consultant and asked what I should do with it. I told him the guy did not want to give me the information to use and asked what I should do. He said that I had information to start a criminal prosecution and then they would have to look at it.

What should I do? This is what grain companies are doing and what farmers are being thrown in jail for. That is something. That is the problem we have in our economy today. It is wrong if you do it and right if I do it. That is why the country is in such terrible shape.

White collar crime in organizations is unbelievable as are the tax dollars we lose in government. Nobody is willing to do something about it. We are all covering our own butts so we do not have to do something about it.

That system has to change or we will go the same route as the former Soviet Union and the other countries that have done it. Let us look at what has happened in the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries where white collar has taken over the economy.

If we want that in our country we can sit quiet, do nothing and let things be. That is not why I was sent to the House. I was sent to the House to keep the laws and to make sure they were enforced.

When I see things going on today in the business world it astounds me that we are still running as a country because that is not the basis on which the country was built. The country was built on honesty, integrity and hard work. Today it is a matter of how we do business and in what fashion we can rip off the next guy for the most dollars. That is not my idea of a true economy. I will fight tooth and nail to get rid of it because my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to pay for it some day. I do not want to be held accountable for it.

If that is not a warning I do not know what else I can do to warn the House. I have done what I thought was right. When I get a phone call in the middle of the night telling me I will be dead in half an hour, I get fed up. The RCMP cannot touch it.

What is going on? I am not fooling when I say I will get to the bottom of it one way or another. Those type of phone calls are not made by drunks. Those type of phone calls are made by people who want to intimidate and destroy. I ain't going to leave this place on that basis. They will have to put a bullet in me before I will leave. I hope they take that seriously because I am finished yet. I hope the minister understands that.

Thank you and God bless during the holidays.

[Ted White, Reform, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I sat patiently listening to the debate tonight. I am not a grain farmer at all, but it struck me we have in the House a group of people on that side with 38% of the votes in the 1997 election and 100% of the power to impose their will upon the people. In western Canada they had maybe less than 20% of the vote and they still have 100% of the power to impose their will upon unwilling recipients of their favours, shall we say.

It reminds me of the early 1980s when Francis Fox, another minister who used to sit on that side, tried to impose his will on the people of Canada when people were trying to install satellite dishes to pick up free choice in television signals.

Francis Fox condoned the seizure of those dishes. In the Vancouver area they went around seizing satellite dishes off apartment buildings. In the end that minister lost the battle because although he had 100% of the power initially the group he was fighting was too big. That group wanted more choice than he could prevent. In the end he lost that battle and we got the freedom of satellite dishes.

Indirectly I relate that to what the Liberal government is doing today. It has this compelling urge to impose its will upon people who do not want that will imposed upon them. As I said, I am a person who is not a grain farmer. There are no western grain farmers on that side of the House. I heard a group of western grain farmers on this side of the House saying they want a choice like the people in the 1980s wanted a choice in satellite transmission of their television signals. I do not understand is why that group opposite wants to impose something different upon them.

I have a question for the member who just finished his speech. What does he feel is driving these people on the other side of the House to impose their will upon unwilling grain farmers?

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question. I cannot figure it. I do not know why. Politically what is being done is dumb. The Liberal caucus will not gain any votes by doing what it is doing.

Some day it would be very wise, as I have said before, to have free votes on some of these issues. They would understand better. The Liberal MPs from Ontario do not object to Ontario farmers having a totally elected board and having the option of selling some or all of their grain to the export market in the United States. They want it. Western farmers want it. Why do they not give it to them?

If they can declare the Canadian Wheat Board voluntary its business would pick up. It would handle more grain. Over the 35 years I have farmed people always supported the wheat board regardless of whether or not they made money. They felt it was an agency that could be trusted. All of a sudden they lost trust in the wheat board.

When the farmers came to me I started looking into the irregularities. I never expected in all my life that I would have to deal with that issue as my first issue as an MP. I never dreamt of it. The more we looked into it and the more documentation we looked at, we found something was wrong. When one farmer gets $1 to a $1.10 more than another farmer for the same quality wheat something is wrong in the pooling system.

It did not happen to strangers. It happened in my family. It happened to two of my brothers. They farmed 10 miles apart. One actually had better quality wheat. He got a $1.10 less a bushel than the other brother who had poor quality fusarium wheat. It was because there was competition between elevators in one place and in the other place there was not.

To all members on that side and to the minister I say to me that is not honesty and not what the pooling system was set up for. That is why I think these people cannot understand. We have 101 seats in Ontario. They satisfy their farmers but they are not willing to give the same opportunities to farmers in western Canada. It will backfire.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to make a comment because the member just said that in essence what was wrong with the government's position of this excellent bill was that we were not trying to earn votes. This was precisely what killed the Conservative Party. It was always introducing legislation and establishing policy that would gain it votes.

The government introduces legislation that is responsible, legislation that is right and legislation that is good for all Canadians. That is what democracy is all about.

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree completely with the gentleman. The only thing I do not agree with is that they are not buying votes in Ontario by giving farmers a marketing choice. They have the votes in Ontario and they are desperately trying to hand on to them. That is why they are allowing their farmers to have these options.

If they want some votes in western Canada they better come clean and give us the same opportunities, or they will divide the country more than they have so far.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is 11.10 in the evening and there is a considerable gallery of hecklers across the way who seem to be having grand time contributing little to the debate, I might note, but a lot in the sense of heckling members who are trying to debate a very important western Canadian issue. Despite all this I would like to get back to what my hon. colleague from North Vancouver was asking the member earlier. Why is the government imposing the bill upon western Canadian farmers?

In light of that I am pleased the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board is in the Chamber this evening at 11.10. I would certainly welcome his comments on why they are doing that if he would choose to rise following my colleague's comments.

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am running out of answers. The questions are coming fast and furious.

I would put it this way. I have given my viewpoint as strongly as I can and I think my colleagues have done the same. I must say we have become very successful in this debate. Look at the audience we have on the Liberal side. Look at the ministers putting in some work or listening. After all it is close to midnight.

We are doing something right on this side. I will turn it over to the minister and ask him whether he would like to respond to that question too. I would like to ask unanimous consent from the House to have him reply.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Part of the order that we made earlier for this debate precludes any unanimous consent motions.

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

There being no further members rising on debate, pursuant to order made Tuesday, June 9, 1998, the question on the amendment now before the House is deemed to have been put and a recorded division deemed demanded and deferred until Thursday, June 11, 1998 at 1 p.m.

It being 11.11 p.m., pursuant to order made on Tuesday, June 9, 1998, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 9 a.m.

(The House adjourned at 11.11 p.m.)