David Anderson

[Canadian Wheat Board, October 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we know that the NDP has become the handmaiden of the big city unions, but at one time it claimed to represent the little guy. It is unfortunate that those members have turned their backs on those common people once again.

We heard this week at the agriculture committee that maintaining the present system is costing farmers at least $200 million a year. The NDP has taken a position that it wants to deny farmers choice and deny them opportunity. We are going to work to give farmers that. We are proud of giving them those opportunities.

[National Peacekeepers' Day Act, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I need some clarification from my colleague on a couple of the comments he made. He seemed to be indicating early on that he wanted a day to recognize our peacekeepers but he also talked about the fact that he did not want to see them being aggressors. I assume he was talking about wanting us to play a more passive role and to recognize the passive role that they may play as peacekeepers rather than peacemakers.

The Royal Canadian Legion has come forward with a fairly strong resolution. It has defined peacekeepers in a much broader sense. It talks about a peacekeeper as being the definition of a veteran, which encompasses our traditional war veterans, cold war veterans, UN peacekeeping veterans, Gulf War veterans and all serving military personnel.

I would like the member to confirm that he is indeed talking about all soldiers, many who are not able to be passive in their role as peacemakers but also had to perform an aggressive role at times. I want to confirm that he is talking about all of our Canadian troops and not limiting it to just certain groups.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I believe if you were to seek the consent of the House, there would be agreement to see the clock as 5:30.

[Biofuels Strategy, October 5th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, these days everyone is talking about biofuels. Across the country there is a buzz about this developing industry. Standards are being set, policies put in place and plants are being built.

Provincial governments must move quickly if they wish to establish an industry in their jurisdiction.

One of the biggest surprises that I received after the election was to realize how little the previous government had done on this file. The new federal government has worked hard in a short time to put a comprehensive biofuels strategy in place. It will be released this fall and will address both ethanol and biodiesel.

We have worked hard to make sure that producer ownership is a part of the alternate fuels equation.

If we do not ensure that producers have the ability to fully participate in the biofuels sector, we will have failed them.

Cypress AgriEnergy Inc. has worked for years to advance the case for ethanol development in my area and it is at it again. It has gone together with Action Southwest to sponsor a forum on ethanol in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan scheduled for October 12. It brings together a wealth of information and I, along with 400 others, will be there to learn more about the industry.

Once again, southwest Saskatchewan leads the way.

[Mayor of Mortlach, September 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Major Ron Locke is the mayor of Mortlach, Saskatchewan, population 240. He cares about his community, but his commitment goes far beyond southwest Saskatchewan.

He is the commander of 734 Communication Squadron and the head of the Civil Military Cooperation detachment. He has served his country well and has just returned from seven months service in Afghanistan.

There are those who oppose our presence in Afghanistan, who are willing to allow the Taliban to return. However, Mr. Locke and his fellow soldiers have worked hard to make Afghanis' lives better. They have put their lives on the line to help rebuild a devastated country.

In their time there, they provided a water supply for the university, reconstructed schools, equipped hospitals, built roads and assisted the Afghani police.

I want to recognize Mr. Locke, but he asked me not to forget his colleagues, especially Captain Trevor Green, who continues to recover from injuries, and Lieutenant Bill Turner, who lost his life in the efforts of reconstruction.

A country is being rebuilt. The work is essential. Let us remember and acknowledge these modern day heroes.

[Canada Grain Act, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I am pleased to table, in both official languages, the review of the Canada Grain Act and the Canadian Grain Commission. This review is required pursuant to the Canada Grain Act.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, that will have to be dealt with in further debate. My point in getting up was to address the issue that the member for Malpeque raised. He said that it will come up again in Group No. 2. He raised these issues about the Canadian Wheat Board in Group No. 1. My point was that for the sake of farmers in western Canada we need to include the Canadian Wheat Board in the access to information provisions in this bill.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows better than this, because he knows full well that when the government went to court, it was defeated in court. The present opposition House leader changed the regulations that day in order to put these farmers in a situation that they could not get out of. The government was found to be the one that was pushing the edges of the law in that situation.

I just want to mention that I think it is passing strange as well that these folks wanted to make sure there is no access to information by the farmers when the farmers are the ones who are paying all the bills of this agency and this organization.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to talk to Bill C-2. I want to address a couple of specific issues.

In the last few minutes, we have heard the member for Malpeque attacking the member for Winnipeg Centre. We also heard him on a rant about the Canadian Wheat Board and his beliefs on that. I want to quote him a couple of times. He said in his speech in talking about political fundraising that he wants the inclusion of everyone. He wanted to have everyone treated equally in terms of fundraising for political parties. He also said that exclusions hurt democracy, but it is interesting that when it comes to his position toward the Canadian Wheat Board, he wants it excluded from the access to information provisions of this bill. We need to say that it would a tragic thing if that were to happen in this House.

I want to thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for having brought forward the amendment in the committee and for standing strongly behind it, because we believe it is an important amendment.

For 13 years the Liberal Party was in power and for 13 years the Liberals have hidden things. We know that they have hidden things because, in the end, we saw the results of them hiding one thing after another. Finally there was the scandal and the corruption was revealed, which everyone in Canada is familiar with, but I do not think there was any place in this country where they hid things more than they did in terms of the Canadian Wheat Board.

Mr. Speaker, I know you are fairly young, but in the 1990s you must have heard this. All of Saskatchewan is familiar with the fact that at one point the present House leader of the Liberal Party was in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board. There was a time when the Canadian Wheat Board, the RCMP, the customs department and Revenue Canada banded together to come up against individual farmers. There is a litany of times when farms were raided in the middle of the night. There was one story of people who got home from the hospital in the afternoon and this conglomeration of government officials invaded their farm in the middle of the night, trying to seize their trucks and their grain because these farmers had had the courage to actually take a load of grain across the border.

It ended badly. It ended with a dozen farmers in jail. The problem with the whole situation was that no one could find out what happened. There was no access to information as to what had happened in that whole scenario. Farmers still do not know who was doing what, how the whole thing was put together, and why they ended up in jail.

Not only that, but farmers have questioned the Canadian Wheat Board's spending over the years. They have not been able to find virtually any information about the spending. The member for Malpeque mentioned that the Wheat Board has annual reports. It is true that it does have annual reports, but each one of them has become harder to dig through to find out the information as to how it is spending farmers' money.

I need to point out that it is all farmers' money that is being spent by the Canadian Wheat Board. It takes the grain, it sells the grain, and it takes off what it needs. It now has $70 million a year in administration costs. Then it delivers the rest of the money, or it is supposed to, back to the farmers. Farmers have no way of knowing if that is in fact what happens, because there is no way of finding out what is going on behind the scenes at the board.

Farmers have questioned things like the cost of administration, which has risen to the point where it is at $70 million a year. They have questioned how the special funds and the contingency funds are being put together and managed. I do not know if members know this, but there is a fund of farmers' uncashed cheques. The board keeps these farmers' uncashed cheques set aside, and after six years they are put into another fund. The board has been spending that money. There is no way that farmers can find out how that money is being spent. Actually, I do not think there is even any way for farmers to find out if they have money in that fund.

It is very important for farmers in western Canada to have access to information for the Canadian Wheat Board. It is a government agency. It is legislated and mandated by the Canadian government. We have a Canadian Wheat Board Act. We have a minister in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board. Certainly it is a government agency. For a long time, the Liberals have stopped farmers from finding out what is going on there. We need to have access to that information.

I again want to thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for having the courage to bring forward the inclusion of the Canadian Wheat Board in the provisions of the access to information sections of this bill. Obviously anyone who is concerned about fairness and accountability would be willing to support those provisions.

One of the things that really bothers me is this. What is it that the Liberals are afraid of here? Why is it that the member for Malpeque would be so paranoid about farmers actually finding out about what is happening within the Canadian Wheat Board? I think that probably it is because they know that after 13 years it is just as well that farmers do not find out what has been going on there and what role the Liberals have had to play within the Canadian Wheat Board. We know that it has been significant. We know that they have had a lot of influence on it over the years. We also know that where they have had influence throughout this country in the past 13 years, it generally has not been a good thing for Canadians.

My question, then, is this. What is it that they are so afraid of? What is it that they are afraid farmers will find out if farmers have access to the Canadian Wheat Board's general information?

I want to point out that this access to information provision protects commercially sensitive information. It is not that farmers, competitors or whoever are going to be able to go in and find out what is going on with the commercial contracts. That is not a part of this. It is about the general information and the work that is being done there.

I again want to congratulate the member for Winnipeg Centre, thank him for including the Canadian Wheat Board in the access to information provisions and encourage him to continue to support that provision.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, June 19th, 2006]

The member for Malpeque wants to heckle me about that. It is interesting to listen to the people who are not excited about this bill. The first people who stepped forward were the huge grain companies. They were not sure whether they liked it because it was not exactly a level playing field, that producers would be given too much of an opportunity. The member for Malpeque would love to stand up with those grain companies against farmers. However, we will stand up for the producers themselves.

It is interesting, as well, that a lot of producer groups have supported it, except for some of the extreme, radical left-wing groups. Those groups have decided that they will take the bill on. They are going to join with the grain companies in opposing it.

I do not think they have read the legislation, and that is disturbing. Both the member from the Liberals and the member from the NDP have taken that letter, which I do not know if they had a part in writing it, and have decided to use it as their main arguments. There are just a couple of strange arguments in it.

They say that Bill C-300 purports to give an advantage to farmer owned Canadian plants. We would say it certainly does. They are going to try to find some extreme example that might not work to try to prove the whole bill is bad. How about if we take, for example, a corporate controlled joint venture flour mill in Japan? That is something we would not want, so it must be what the bill provides. The argument is we cannot allow corporate controlled joint venture flour mills in Japan to take advantage of this bill. The bill states that any plants have to be owned by a majority of producers. We are not talking about Canadian producers. Nor are not talking about corporate controlled entities.

Then it goes on to say that Bill-300 would create legislated cost advantages for some producers but not others. We say that it would create some advantage for producers, and we are more than willing to do that.

I am a little disturbed that these left-wing farm groups are defending the big companies against the small producers. I am even more disappointed that the member for Malpeque has chosen to join in that and to oppose Canadian farmers. He made an airport tour and came up a small report in which he made some recommendations. I would like to read a couple of things from that. It says in the conclusion:

--Canada 's farmers, who work hard and efficiently, want to make their living from the marketplace, and the policies undertaken by our governments must provide the conditions allowing that to happen.

The bill tries to do that.

We need policies that help farmers earn a decent living and that create economic stability in rural Canada.

The bill also tries to do that.

The first two recommendations of his report are: that all governments place a priority on measures that will enhance farmers' economic returns from the marketplace; and second, that ministers and ministries of agriculture see their primary role as advocating on behalf of primary producers. The bill does that.

He should be supporting it, but he is not and that is unfortunate. I find it ironic that he supports our position on child care, but he will not support our position on farmers to give producers some return in the marketplace. He was the one who suggested we should give child care choice to parents. He also supported our budget, and we thank him for that. However, perhaps he should step forward and support an initiative such as.

I am very disappointed with him. He claims to have been a farm leader for years, wanting to step forward and defend farmers. However, for some reason, he has insisted that his party take a position in opposition to the bill. We think he should reconsider that. He needs to support the bill and to give producers what they need enable them to make the return from the marketplace.

The member for Battlefords—Lloydminster made a very legitimate point when he said that the member did not live in the designated area. He is not from anywhere near there, but he feels he has an obligation to try to interfere with my ability to do business in the part of the world in which I operate. That is a huge concern for me. The last thing we need is people from other areas, who do not understand our systems, explaining to us what they have.

The ball is back in the official opposition's court. We look forward to its support on it.