Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to complete my remarks on Bill C-2, the so-called accountability act. I have a couple of quotes that I was not quite finished with that I will get to in a moment.
It is ironic that the government by devious means, and that is the Prime Minister working with the leader of the separatist party, is attempting to disadvantage the Canadian Wheat Board, a prairie grain farmer marketing institution. In disadvantaging farmers in western Canada, the Prime Minister is really allowing the opportunity for the international grain trade, our competitors in the international market, to gain marketing advantage over Canadian farmers. It is ironic that we are talking about an accountability act and the Prime Minister is using these tactics.
It is devious because the move has nothing to do with accountability at all but, instead, shows that the Prime Minister will go to almost any length to get his way in his ideological drive to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board. This is not just a Canadian Wheat Board issue. This is about the Prime Minister's tactics, his willingness to cut a deal with the leader of the separatist party, and his ideological obsession with trying to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board, a board now controlled by farmers themselves.
Let us look for a moment at this access to information and how it will disadvantage the Canadian Wheat Board. I turn to a letter that the chair of the Canadian Wheat Board tabled with the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. It stated:
Therefore, the true beneficiaries of adding the CWB to ATIA will primarily be non-farmers such as competitors and foreign antagonists that would be able to make information requests.
Subjecting the CWB to ATIA will put it at a disadvantage to its commercial competitors. These competitors could gain access to types of information about the CWB that the CWB could not obtain from them. It would also open up sensitive information to access by its international antagonists (primarily, the United States). By way of example, since the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Trade Agreement the CWB has been subject to no fewer than 14 U.S.-led trade challenges or investigations. All of these actions have been groundless as the CWB has not once been found to be acting outside of its international trade obligations. Yet, through the CWB, western Canadian farmers have been forced to spend in excess of $15 million to defend itself against these actions. The use of access to information requests by foreign parties is certain to become another vehicle to harass western Canadian farmers.
That is in fact what will happen. The Wheat Board will end up having to pay the costs for nuisance requests from people who are opposed to the board and farmers will have to bear those costs in western Canada. The Canadian Wheat Board again is being disadvantaged.
The parliamentary secretary is one of the key people trying to get the Canadian Wheat Board under access to information and he knows full well that the government never put forward the amendment. Why? It is because its legal advice said, as the Canadian Wheat Board Act states, that the Canadian Wheat Board is not a crown corporation or a government entity. Yes, it guarantees loans, but so does the government in other circles. That is important but it is not reason enough to have the Canadian Wheat Board under access to information.
The bottom line, which the government knows full well, is that the government had legal advice stating that the board should not be under these rules. The Canadian Wheat Board will be in the unique position of being the only non-government entity that has to abide by access to information rules and the people who will be disadvantaged are the grain farmers of western Canada. The people who will be advantaged are the international grain trade competitors that we compete against, mainly stationed in the United States.
What is happening here with the Bloc proposing the amendment to bring in access to information clearly shows that the Prime Minister is willing to cut a deal with almost anyone, even separatists, to get his way and disadvantage prairie farmers in the process.