Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the House to speak on the concurrence motion moved by the hon. member for Malpeque as it relates to the Canadian Wheat Board, particularly its marketing of barley and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food's barley plebiscite.
Let me begin my speech by repeating the question I posed during question period today, but before I do that, Mr. Speaker, I want to advise you that I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Saint Boniface.
I asked the minister the following question:
--the result of the Canadian Wheat Board's plebiscite on barley is in and, due to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food's meddling, the victim is democracy. Never before has Canada seen such a farce, fraud and betrayal of core democratic values, with traceable ballots, no available voters lists and no transparent scrutineers to monitor.
The government is mocking democracy and does not seem to be concerned. When will the government give farmers an honest vote on an honest question?
I ask, when will the government apologize to all Canadians for its blatant disregard of democracy and when will it allow an honest vote to be taken?
Being a member of the House of Commons and having to ask that type of question is not an easy thing to do. To have to question a party's commitment to democracy and freedom of choice is not something I take lightly, but given the government's actions as they relate to the Canadian Wheat Board, I was given no other choice.
People can disagree. It happens every day in the House. It happens in our homes. It happens in our communities. We argue, we discuss, we listen, we retort, and we acknowledge differences of opinion. The party I am part of believes in the Canadian Wheat Board. The party opposite does not. Let it be. People can disagree.
Unfortunately, the minority government has chosen a course of action as it relates to the Canadian Wheat Board that can only leave me questioning its commitment to democracy when it fears that the end result of a fair, legitimate vote will be contrary to what it wants to do. Let me repeat “fair and legitimate” because what the government has undertaken to do in regard to the Canadian Wheat Board has in no way been fair and has in no way been legitimate.
From the outset, the government has engaged in tactics that would have made the most corrupt dictator applaud: rigging voters lists; appointing a sham task force to write a report and issue an opinion that probably was written before it began; imposing gag orders to prevent the Canadian Wheat Board from advocating for and explaining its preferred option; firing pro-Wheat Board directors; cancelling the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food meetings that were to hear from the pro-Wheat Board president and CEO; later on firing that same president and CEO; numbering the ballots on the barley vote so they could be traced back to farmers; issuing more than one ballot to some farmers and then calling the farmers to see which ones they want counted--is that open voting?; asking farmers a muddled, unclear question when a simple yes or no would have sufficed; and finally, today when the results on the barley vote were released, interpreting the numbers in a skewed way so it could claim, and incorrectly I might add, that the majority of voters wants marketing choice.
Let us look in a little more depth at the numbers released today by the Minister of Agriculture. The minister likes to, and I will add falsely, claim that an overwhelming majority of farmers wants to see marketing choice. For the minister's sake, I hope his fingers were crossed when he made that preposterous statement.
What the numbers really show, when looked at in a vacuum, is that there is no clear majority. What the minister chose to do in making his preposterous statement is add two of the options together to form his overwhelming majority. Unfortunately for the minister, when the two supportive Wheat Board numbers are added together, they trump what he would call an overwhelming majority. “Facts be damned,” says the minority government, “we will get our desired results from somewhere, someplace”.
By including a question that allowed farmers to believe that the Wheat Board could co-exist in a marketing system, the Minister of Agriculture is perpetrating a fraud on the farmers he purports to represent. Absolutely no study has said that the Wheat Board can exist in a dual marketing scheme. Even the minister's tainted task force said the Wheat Board cannot co-exist in an open marketing scheme.
Why then was this option included? Was it because the minister knew that had only two questions been asked, he would have lost, and badly, I might add, so he rigged the questions and thus the vote? He did not listen to the farmers. He did not hear the question that they wanted. He disregarded anything coming from the farmers who wanted to speak in a forthright way.
The minister should be ashamed. It was about actions and half-truths. In fact, the numbers show that only 13% of voters support the full dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board. What that really indicates is that the second question was a false question, because we know that the Canadian Wheat Board cannot last when there is marketing choice.
Let us look at the figures from my home province of Manitoba. The Canadian Wheat Board is based in Winnipeg, so nowhere in the country will the Conservative government's actions be felt more harshly than in downtown Winnipeg, although I remember a member opposite saying that “it doesn't matter, Cargill can do it”. One might ask why the Manitoba Conservative MPs are refusing to defend the city of Winnipeg. I have asked that question many times, but that is another issue for another day.
In Manitoba, 3,703 votes were cast. Of those who voted, 50.6% voted in favour of retaining the single desk system of marketing barley. Now I might not be much of a math major, but to me this indicates that a majority of those who voted in Manitoba voted to retain the current system, not when adding two numbers, not when skewing the numbers to one's advantage, and not when abusing democracy. Rather, a clear, albeit slim, majority of Manitoba farmers voted for the status quo. Yet for some reason that I cannot imagine, the Minister of Agriculture in the minority government did not talk about that clear majority. One wonders why.
The government does not have to take my word. The minister of agriculture for Manitoba, the hon. Rosann Wowchuk, confirmed my analysis of the numbers. She also said the questions were flawed.
Since the Conservatives came to power it would not be a stretch to say that they have played loose with the truth, facts be damned. A colleague of mine referred to it as “truthiness”. Today's announcement by the Minister of Agriculture is just another example of the government's embrace of the concept of truthiness: keep spinning; never stop to let people see the facts; if we get them busy enough and repeat the same falsehood over and over they are bound to believe us; keep it spinning; cajole the facts to suit us; and massage the evidence.
This is no way for a government to act. It is time for the government to cease with this charade. The masquerade is over. Canadians can see the facts no matter how hard, how fast and into what shape the government tries to change them. It must stop. The Minister of Agriculture should uncross his fingers and admit that no clear majority exists and that the entire process has indeed been flawed. I would submit that Canadians can see through this spin.
The people of Manitoba know the impact of the demise of the Canadian Wheat Board on its city, on the farmers of rural Canada and on the families of rural Canada. I was just looking at a report from the farm women's association, which talks about the importance of the Wheat Board for them. Everybody understands the importance of a single marketing, strong Canadian Wheat Board. The government is playing with the facts.