Mr. Speaker, like my colleague from Winnipeg South Centre, it is a pleasure and an obligation for me to speak on behalf of the Wheat Board this evening. I have spoken on it at every opportunity and, like my colleague, I do not come from an agricultural background but I can speak intelligently to this topic. I do not think we need to come from the industry to speak on a actual topic.
The Wheat Board is a very important institution to Manitobans and all western Canadians and I think the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is finding that out in a very harsh way. It seems that his only objective, after receiving his mandate letter, was to dismantle the Wheat Board. It seems to me that if there is anything else the Minister of Agriculture has done over the last 14 or 16 months, it is very difficult to identify it. However, that is his objective and that is what he wants to do but he is having one heck of a time.
My colleague from the Conservative Party said, “Respect the decision”. If there has been anything about this whole process, it has been how disrespectful the whole process has been from day one. Starting from the question period today, I think it is very typical of what has been going on here.
In question period today, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food answered a question put to him by my colleague from Winnipeg South Centre by saying that he could finally respond to a critic he could respect. I thought that was pretty telling of what farmers and producers have been putting up with over the last little while.
The critic for agriculture, the hon. member for Malpeque, has visited western Canada on quite a few occasions and I have had an opportunity to go across the rural areas with him. If anything, he is very well respected across the country. One does not need to be from Manitoba or western Canada to have people's ear. In my opinion, he is probably more knowledgeable on the file than the actual minister and he has the ear of people from all parties.
When we talk about respecting decisions, it seems to me that this whole process has been flawed from day one. The lack of respect started from day one. Basically from the time the minister got his mandate letter, things were happening. For instance, the minister held one-sided meetings in Saskatchewan only with people who agreed with him, people who did not necessarily want to keep the Wheat Board and who wanted to do away with the Wheat Board. I thought that was pretty sad. Saskatchewan and Manitoba were literally asked to sit in the corner while Alberta was sitting at the table. This is totally unacceptable.
Tampering with the voters list: 16,000 producers taken off the electoral list. If that kind of thing had happened prior to a vote in any democratic country in the world, it would have been seen as totally unusual. This is Canada, after all. This is not a fascist, third world country. This is absolutely unacceptable.
The next thing is that a gag order was used to prevent the Wheat Board from defending its position. It seems to me that if we want to put up a good fight and we want to express our opinion on something, we need to allow the Wheat Board to also express its position on certain things. I think all of us in this House have indicated that we would respect the producers' decision on the Wheat Board, but at least we should have an even playing field during the process. That certainly has not happened.
There were the firings of Ross Keith and subsequently Adrian Measner, the president and CEO of the Wheat Board. Mr. Measner's reputation world wide is absolutely impeccable. We still hear that it was one heck of a loss for Canada. The Wheat Board has lost a good person and one of the most knowledgeable people in an industry, in a corporation or in a Wheat Board that was the biggest seller of wheat in the world. It seems to me that it was a huge error that people always tried to dismantle Wheat Board from within.
Standard & Poor's dropped the Wheat Board's credit rating from triple A to double A-plus. If we read the report, I believe it was 11 times where Standard & Poor's actually identified the reason for this drop in credit rating and it actually identified it as interference by the current government. It is very clear that once again we are trying to undermine the Wheat Board from within. Now all of a sudden one of the major institutions in Canada is paying for that with a reduced credit rating.
The next thing we hear is that the minister will be announcing the split between the wheat and barley plebiscites. They are two different things. When it comes to barley, a lot of it is actually sold within Canada. I think we all agree that the bulk of it is sold for feed within Canada and, therefore, the Wheat Board is not necessarily as important as it would be, for instance, on the whole wheat thing.
The plebiscite has three questions but not clear concise questions that we were supposed to have as mandated by the Canadian Wheat Board Act. Again, it is a very convoluted plebiscite. People are not sure exactly what is going on. People had three different questions to vote on and, after all that, we found out that the ballots were numbered.
It was one unusual thing after another in a democracy. The ballots were numbered, which means that the government can basically trace the vote back to the producer. Let us think about that for a second. In most countries that would be illegal. As a matter of fact, KPMG, which was the firm responsible, actually called producers back and asked them which one of their votes they wanted applied which way. Therefore, it was traceable.
We could add another thing. Some producers received more than one ballot. I know a producer in Manitoba who received four ballots. Is that not interesting?
When we look at the process, it was absolutely flawed from day one, and I am not making this up. This is factual. I am telling the House right now that the way I am saying this process happened is actual fact.
Today we received the results of the actual plebiscite on barley. It is very interesting that the Minister of Agriculture held a big press conference this morning and said that when we add up the people who wanted an option of the private sector and perhaps the Wheat Board and people who did not want it, the percentage adds up to 62%. He said that we have a majority and it is a strong majority.
If that logic holds, it seems to me that if we take just the opposite, if we take the people who wanted to retain the single desk and people who wanted an option, although we know that is absolutely fraudulent because the option was not a possibility according to every expert that we spoke to and also according to the group that was put together by the minister, but if we put those two numbers together we are looking at 86.2%. If the logic holds for one it must hold for the other.
What is left is that actually 13.8% of the people would like to no longer have a Wheat Board at all. Those are the numbers we are actually working with.
I would just like to comment in French, because it is important.
In my opinion, when barley and wheat were split up, that was also dishonest. In my opinion, that should not have been done. There are two main markets: the first is barley for malt production, the second is feed barley. In Canada, a great deal more barley is sold on the feed barley market. I feel that giving farmers the option of selling barley to the private sector or to the Canada Wheat Board was a false option. In fact, it did not exist. I am extremely disappointed with what happened throughout this entire process.
Colleagues on the other side of the House speak of respect. I insist on stating that for the entire process, at every step of the way, there was a lack of respect. In my opinion, we should set the whole process aside and ask producers a very clear, concise question and start all over again.