Frank Valeriote

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 19th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I did not quite hear a question in that comment--

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 19th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, we should not even be debating Bill C-18 today. Alongside tens of thousands of western Canadian farmers, members on this side of the House await the plebiscite the Conservative government is legally required to hold under section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act before it can apply its ideological scalpel to a Canadian institution that has been the backbone of grain farming across the Prairies for decades.

Nevertheless, if we have learned anything from the behaviour of the government in the early days of this Parliament, it is that its ministers are rolling out the greatest hits of the Reform Party. Throwing caution to the wind, it is stifling debate as much as possible and taking the rest of Canada along with it no matter who it negatively impacts.

Neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has ever made much of a secret of their single-minded desire for the death of the single desk system. What they have kept from enquiring Canadians are the reasons they refuse to hold a plebiscite of the Wheat Board membership, or even why in March, heading into an election, the minister assured farmers that there was no reason to worry and that their opinions would be sought on the Wheat Board when it came forward in this Parliament.

Once it became clear that the minister had no intention of honouring his March pledge, the Canadian Wheat Board held its own plebiscite on the continued operation of the single desk under the Canadian Wheat Board. The results were clear. The majority of western Canadian grain farmers chose the stability, competitive advantage and clout, not just in Canada but overseas, that it enjoys due to its numbers brought together under a single desk.

In August 68,000 ballots were mailed out to farmers. Over the course of that month meetings were held across the Prairies and hundreds of farmers came in off the fields for meetings as harvest began simply to ensure their voices were heard. Farmers for both sides attended these meetings. They listened respectfully and made their points as to why they believed it should go or why it should stay.

I attended several of these meetings and was astonished, as were the organizers. Never before had they held a single meeting where over 500 farmers attended, such as the one in Saskatoon in early August. I set out to listen to the different viewpoints of various farmers and at one meeting was pulled aside by one farmer from the Saskatoon area. He said to me, and I will paraphrase because he used much more colourful language, “I haven't voted Liberal in the last thousand years and it's unlikely that I will in the next thousand years, but I certainly did not vote Conservative so that they could kill the Canadian Wheat Board”.

I may not have changed his vote, but what he wanted to ensure was that someone in Ottawa was listening to him. Sadly, he could not go to his own MP because just when farmers are asking them to listen and represent the farmers' best interests, Conservative MPs are nowhere to be seen or heard. Not one. Not one single Conservative prairie MP has the courage to stand up and defend the rights of his or her constituents to hold a government-conducted plebiscite as mandated by section 47.1 of the act.

The Conservative Party only received 24% of eligible Canadian votes, which certainly does not constitute a mandate to run roughshod over the democratic rights of farmers to maintain their livelihoods under the Canadian Wheat Board Act.

Desperate to have their voices heard, farmers held their own plebiscite. The results of the plebiscite were unambiguous with a 56% response rate, a number similar to the turnout in many recent general elections and byelections, including in the minister's own riding. Sixty-two per cent of wheat producers and 51% of barley producers voted to retain their single-desk marketing and sales arm under the Canadian Wheat Board.

Regrettably, the minister simply dismissed the results as an expensive survey. Unfortunately, Canadians do not have the same opportunity to dismiss their muzzled prairie MPs' own election results similarly.

Many argue that with the fragile state of the world economy, the CWB is more important than ever before for the grain-exporting prairie provinces. The livelihoods of Canadian farmers and small businesses are at stake.

Recently even The Economist wrote that, concerned about the death of the single desk marketing system:

Smaller producers, faced with mounting marketing costs, will inevitably have to sell their farms to bigger rivals or agribusiness companies....devastating small prairie towns, whose economies depend on individual farmers with disposable income.

I have heard from farmers, even some who favour killing the Wheat Board, that thousands of farms managed by farmers whose age exceeds the average age of farmers in Canada, which is 58 years, are likely to close. With their closure so too will the small town and village economies supported by those farmers suffer. We risk seeing an end to a number of small towns in rural parts of our prairie provinces.

The board markets and sells on behalf of every wheat and grain producer in the Prairies to some 70 countries and 100 buyers across the world. Its unique position allows it to act as a price setter instead of a price taker.

In contrast to The Economist, the Wall Street Journal welcomed the impending demise of the Canadian Wheat Board noting, “more money goes back to farmers than under an open-market system,” the open market system that the government is proposing. It went on to say:

Grain handlers such as Cargill Inc., Viterra Inc. and Bunge Ltd. could see their roles—and returns—in Canadian grain markets grow.

At whose expense? No one else other than our prairie wheat farmers. Recently in a report from Alliance Grain Traders Inc., which is conveniently only now opening a pasta plant in Saskatchewan, said its “margin erosion is combatted by negotiating lower prices from growers”.

From my time on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, I have learned that a major reason that pasta manufacturing has not been meaningfully undertaken in the west is it is too far distant from a market that would consume its products and transportation costs would be too great.

Now that the Canadian Wheat Board will be abolished, there is the opportunity to get the lowest possible price for grain from farmers who are no longer able to set the best possible price that will allow pasta manufacturers to offset the transportation costs of marketing their pasta, again at the expense of western Canadian farmers.

What is clear is that the protection of the family farm in the prairie provinces is not a priority under the Conservative government. It would prefer to create an environment that would see farmers fail than support an environment that protects the way of life for multitudes of farmers and their families whose way of life will be dramatically changed and not for the better.

For whom will they be changed? For the well-being of large agribusiness and foreign interests. Without the Canadian Wheat Board which returns excess profits to the pockets of farmers, the larger rail and grain companies that can sustain their own networks will finally have access to those farmers' profits. Their interest is not the well-being of farmers, but rather their own bottom line. Farmers will be left to bid one another down to the lowest possible price to sell their grain.

We know not only from studies but intuitively that farmers will fall prey to the gluttonous appetites for profit of grain companies and the railways, appetites that have been held in check by a steady diet controlled by the Canadian Wheat Board. In the wake of the minister's pronouncements on the death of the CWB a month ago, shares in Viterra dramatically spiked.

Moreover, there have been no assurances made by the government regarding Canadian food sovereignty. It is one thing that small family farms will be bought up by massive agribusiness; it is entirely another to see Canadian farms expropriated by foreign interests not unlike the purchasing of our mineral rich lands out west, concerned more with their own national food security and not at all with Canadian food sovereignty.

It certainly does not help that just yesterday the United States took a backward step with buy America and unilaterally thickened the border in an effort to stimulate its own economy. Meanwhile the Canadian government is prepared to give itself a hernia removing all of the tools the Canadian wheat and barley producers rely on to protect their livelihood, including the Canadian Wheat Board.

The number one trade ask by Americans has always been to get rid of the Wheat Board because it gives our farmers a competitive advantage. Now with the Prime Minister as the head waiter and bottle washer to the Americans, we are preparing to hand them a huge agribusiness, their very request on a platter with absolutely nothing in return, not even a modest tip from a country which has shrugged its shoulders and wrapped itself in the shroud of American protectionism.

There have been 14 challenges to the World Trade Organization from the United States demanding that we get rid of the Canadian Wheat Board. In every instance, the WTO has ruled in our favour and allowed western grain producers to maintain their valuable resource.

Why are there challenges? It is because the Wheat Board gives our farmers a competitive advantage that is the envy of others around the world. We must make no mistake that once it is gone the provisions our trade agreements say that it can never be brought back. We would be foolish and naive to think that our supply managed industries, like chicken, dairy, eggs and turkey, are not already now being lined up in the sights of the government for their demise.

This is not about limiting choice for farmers. The CWB is in a unique position to market different qualities of grain at different times of the year to different markets through a board that knows it serves the diverse needs of many farmers. Its strength is in the fact that all farmers across the Prairies are in it together. Its elected directors are farmers, too. They understand what it is to sell and market grain, the best grain in the world.

Should this legislation pass, by reducing the number of directors from 10 elected and 5 appointed to simply 5 government appointed directors to the 5-year interim voluntary wheat board, the Conservative government would have it that only its own people, dictated to from the Prime Minister's office, speak to the multitude of farmers.

Overwhelmingly, in Wheat Board election after election, directors who support the single desk under the Wheat Board are returned. Farmers elect these directors and yet, once again, suppressing any sort of democratic expression, the government places a higher value on ideology than on the experience of farmers.

These are farmers who understand the virtue of saving $1,400 per producer car on transportation costs through the CWB's unique bargaining position, a savings that will be almost immediately lost. Presently, it is in a position to negotiate with CN and CP Rail to ensure the adequate supply of producer cars. This, too, will be lost.

One of the more substantial complaints from within the agricultural industry is that Canada is regarded as an unreliable supplier of agricultural products by virtue of the fact that it cannot get its supplies to port along the railway. In large part, this is a direct result of the ongoing disputes between suppliers and CN-CP Rail.

The agricultural industries anticipated that these concerns would be addressed in the rail service review tabled in March of this year. Meanwhile, seven months later, we are talking about stripping prairie farmers of transportation infrastructure while the government shelves yet another report.

The government has failed to appoint a facilitator in good time. It has failed to address the day-to-day logistical issues of shippers, like getting them the right number of cars and on time, and is telegraphing to the farmers, who will be affected by this in large part, farmers who do not have immediate access to the border, farmers who are not on the main line, that where once their concerns were difficult to address with the rail companies, now they will be almost impossible to address.

I have learned, through my discussion with the owners of Shortline Railways, that they will no longer be able to maintain their railways as they will no longer have the support of the Canadian Wheat Board once it is gone. The rest of the farmers will still not have any resolution along the main lines.

As it stands, hundreds of grain facilities have access to only one rail line and are held captive by either CP or CN, subject to their charges. Through the Canadian Wheat Board, farmers have had the clout to, as a unit, stand up to both CN and CP to get the best deal for their transportation costs possible.

In my conversations with western Canadian grain farmers, all too often I have heard tragic stories about the treatment of producers at the hands of the railways. The railway companies have such disregard for wheat farmers that often they will send railway cars with holes in them without any consideration for what grain will be lost along the way. Farmers, individually, are up against a behemoth, where once their collective clout enabled them recourse in the face of such poor treatment.

The government also refuses to acknowledge that there is a value added of $500 million annually in services provided by the Canadian Wheat Board in the form of critical weather analysis and research and development, as well as the transportation benefits. Even by using a network of over 800 weather stations located on farms across western provinces, the Canadian Wheat Board provides accurate, up-to-the-minute weather information, as well as grain research and innovation.

In a token offering in the legislation, the government is recommending a voluntary check-off to be applied toward grain research and innovation. What farmer will check off additional money for research and innovation while her or his profits are going go up in smoke? However, the government seems intent on spending money, estimated conservatively at almost $500 million, in a time when it claims that we are still in a fragile economic state, to demobilize an organization that has yet to require any federal funding. It has been farmer funded for farmer profits.

Forsaking billions of dollars in revenue with no sound replacement model is reckless. The government has made it clear that it will only listen to farmers so long as they are saying something the government wants to hear. Canadian farmers know what is in their own best interests and the government would do well to listen to their collective voice, not simply to the voices of the few who will be in a better position than the many to profit from the demise of the single desk system.

For our part, the Liberal Party entirely opposes this reckless, ideological legislation and finds no value in the feckless rhetoric of the minister and members content to vote like lemurs for the demise of a system that is still supported by the majority of its members.

I challenge the minister and the party opposite. If they are not afraid of the results of a plebiscite on the continued existence of the single desk system and if they truly feel that a majority of western Canadian farmers are on side with their prescription for the death of the Canadian Wheat Board, they should withdraw their legislation and hold their own plebiscite on the issue, as mandated by the very legislation they hope to destroy, the very legislation that western Canadian farmers hold so sacrosanct, that the necessity for democratic expression is enshrined within it to protect farmers from the very abuse that the Minister of Agriculture is currently perpetrating.

In closing, I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 19th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I have been on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for three years now and wheat farmers have been before the committee on many occasions. We continually ask them, in their opinion, why manufacturers have not begun to build pasta plants out west. They say, almost unanimously, that they do not want to do this because of the distance from their markets, not because of the Canadian Wheat Board.

However, now that the Wheat Board is on its deathbed, they have said, through the Alliance Grain Traders Inc., only now will they open a pasta plant in Saskatchewan. In one of its reports it said, “Margin erosion is combated by negotiating lower prices from growers”.

Does the member believe the plant will go in there now because it knows it will pay less for its grain, and it will be at the expense of Canadian farmers? What delusion is the minister under to think farmers are going to do better by getting rid of the Wheat Board?

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 19th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I have two questions for the minister, but I would first request that he resist belittling the efforts of urban members of Parliament who know where their food comes from. We know that food comes from farmers and we are here defending the well-being of western Canadian farmers.

My two questions are as follows, very quickly. We know that he does not respect the opinion of opposition members and we know he does not respect the opinion of farmers who have expressed it in a plebiscite. Would he respect an objective opinion from The Economist magazine that said recently:

Smaller producers, faced with mounting marketing costs, will inevitably have to sell their farms to bigger rivals or agribusiness companies...devastating small prairie towns, whose economies depend on individual farmers with disposable income.

[Privilege, October 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I too rise in support of the question of privilege brought forward by the hon. member for Malpeque.

I stood yesterday in the House and argued in defence of the rights of western Canadian grain farmers and all Canadians that the insistence of the Conservative government to move ahead with this legislation, despite its refusal to respect section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act, was an issue that, in abrogating the rights of farmers, was a matter demanding urgent attention by the Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board and by this House.

Section 47.1 of the act is clear. I will not repeat the entire portion of the section as the member for Malpeque did that quite adequately.

We know that the minister must comply with the law. The government is missing a key element in its ideological pursuit of the death of the single desk sales and marketing system, the will of western Canadian grain farmers. Consequently, the legislation before us exceeds the authority of the government based on its neglect in fulfilling all of its obligations.

The institution of the Canadian Wheat Board is considered so sacrosanct that codified in the statute is a mechanism designed to protect farmers from a government arbitrarily removing the strength and clout of an agency that markets and sells wheat and barley at the best possible price on behalf of all western Canadian grain farmers.

Section 47.1 was enshrined in the Canadian Wheat Board Act to prevent the very abuse that is being perpetrated by the minister and the government this morning. It is not up to me or the minister to determine the fate of the single desk marketing and sales system. It is up to farmers.

The government insists it is motivated by choice. However, it is forcing its will on farmers, not asking them. Meanwhile our party's position has been consistent from the beginning: let farmers decide.

This is an issue about the right of self-determination by farmers, a right so important it was enshrined in legislation. The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that the Conservative government has not only ignored the consequences of its actions but has acted in deliberate contravention of the legislation it is seeking to modify.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that you find a prima facie case of a violation of this House's privilege.

[Request for Emergency Debate, October 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in the House to request an emergency debate on the government's refusal to hold a plebiscite pursuant to section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act before introducing legislation to kill the single desk marketing system.

Section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act clearly states:

The Minister shall not cause to be introduced in Parliament a bill that would exclude any kind, type, class or grade of wheat or barley, or wheat or barley produced in any area in Canada...unless...(a) the Minister has consulted with the board about the exclusion or extension; and, (b) the producers of the grain have voted in favour of the exclusion or extension, the voting process having been determined by the Minister.

Despite his ideological wanderings or rhetorical dissensions, the minister must let Wheat Board members decide if their sales and marketing arm should be allowed to continue to operate in its current form and protect farmers by selling the grains the board currently sells, namely wheat and barley, at the best price possible for its membership, or if it should be torn away from them without any thought to what will fill the void the government intends to create.

Rather than giving Canadian farmers the right to choose, he is telling them that while this may affect their livelihoods and small-town economies, their voice does not matter. He is telling them that he will not follow the act he is responsible for governing and that he will not protect western Canadian farmers or their rights under the act.

The institution of the Canadian Wheat Board is considered so sacrosanct as to have legislation created, such as that which exists in section 47.1 of the act, to prevent the very abuse that is being perpetrated by the minister.

Should you not allow the debate to go ahead, Mr. Speaker, any opportunity for western Canadian grain farmers to determine their own future with the single desk system will be foreclosed. You and you alone now stand between the law being followed and the law being violated.

Farmers feed Canadian families. They have earned the right to choose, and the government has not earned any sort of mandate to disenfranchise a single western Canadian grain producer by circumventing the Canada Wheat Board Act.

Given the reluctance of the minister to honour this particular provision of the act, the Canadian Wheat Board mailed 68,000 ballots to wheat and barley farmers across the prairies this summer. With a 56% participation rate, a majority of both wheat and barley farmers voted to maintain the single desk under the Canadian Wheat Board.

In 2005, an economic impact analysis conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed the positive economic impact for Winnipeg, for western Canadian farmers and for Canadians as a whole from the continued existence of the single desk marketing system.

It is not up to me, to any member of Parliament or to the minister to decide if the board should maintain its mandate or if it should be dissolved. It is up to farmers. I understand why western Canadian farmers would want it to continue to exist. What I do not understand is why the minister would want to dismantle an organization that is of major economic benefit to western Canada without asking them their opinion, as the law requires him to do.

The notion of self-determination has been codified in other pieces of legislation in this country, whether it is aboriginal rights or the rights of employees to negotiate unfettered. When these rights are codified, it is done for very particular reasons. When granted, these rights are a clear statement by a government that these rights--the rights of farmers, of workers or of aboriginal Canadians--cannot be trodden upon without the whole engagement or consent of everyone involved.

This does not just protect the single desk system, but the right of Canadian farmers to determine their own destiny and their own livelihood.

The Prime Minister made it clear in his speech after the May 2 election that his government would be governing for all Canadians, not just Conservatives. Even Conservative farmers have approached me, concerned with the minister's Ahab-like pursuit of the destruction of the single desk.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, for the reasons set out to you in my letter this morning, I request that you find that this issue meets the requirements for an emergency debate set out in subsections 52(5) and 52(6) of the Standing Orders, and that this House do now adjourn to address the requirement under section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act for the Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board to hold a plebiscite before taking any action to change the current formation of the single desk marketing and sales system.

[Petitions, October 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, while the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands responded to my question by citing one person who favoured the end of the Canadian Wheat Board, I rise to submit a petition signed by countless western Canadian grain and barley farmers who are concerned with the government's ideological plan to kill the Canadian Wheat Board without first holding a plebiscite of the board's membership as it is required to do by section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act.

Western Canadian farmers' livelihoods are at risk should they lose the clout of the Canadian Wheat Board to set the best price for their grain, negotiate fair treatment from the railways, and lower transportation costs among the many services it provides.

The petitioners demand that the Minister of Agriculture honour their wishes as expressed democratically through a plebiscite they held this past summer.

[Canadian Wheat Board, October 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government is railroading wheat and barley farmers who support maintaining their own single desk marketing and sales arm under the Canadian Wheat Board.

The government is tying farmers to the track by removing their clout and ability to stand up to grain companies and unfair rail prices and transportation costs. It is removing their ability to be price setters and leaving them forced to accept the lowest price possible.

Why will the so-called law and order government, intent on breaking the law, not follow the law set out in the Canadian Wheat Board Act and hold its own plebiscite before it introduces legislation to kill the single desk system?

[Petitions, September 29th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I submit yet another petition signed by hundreds of people from the Guelph and surrounding areas urging the government to exclude all sub-federal governments and their public agencies, including municipalities, from any Canada-EU procurement agreement.

Municipalities, like Guelph, stand to lose the right to buy local materials and services, hindering our ability to stimulate local innovation, foster local community economic development, create local employment and achieve other valuable public policies.

The petitioners urge that the negotiations also be paused while there is a national consultation process. We must remove the veil of secrecy and introduce transparency into these negotiations by consulting Parliament, as is done in other countries that are part of these negotiations.

[Safe Streets and Communities Act, September 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative speakers on the bill have negatively characterized with disdain the fact that rehabilitation was introduced into one of the principles of sentencing about 40 years ago.

I would ask the hon. member to correlate that rehabilitation principle with the facts. Where have crime rates gone over the last 40 years?