Pat Martin

[Petitions, December 5th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition signed by literally thousands of Canadians from all across the country.

The petitioners call upon the House of Commons and Parliament assembled to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known. They point out that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial causes combined, yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. They also complain that Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and blocking international efforts to curb its use.

The petitioners call upon the government to ban asbestos in all of its forms and institute a just transition program for asbestos workers and the communities they live in; they call upon the government to end all government subsidies of asbestos, both in Canada and abroad; and, finally, they call upon the government to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government arbitrarily ordered the Wheat Board to raise its contingency fund from $100 million to $200 million. The government itself is using farmers' money to pay for the closing down of and contingencies associated with a change in the Wheat Board's structure. The Conservatives have off-loaded the burden of these closing costs onto prairie producers. The prairie farmers associated with this should be furious.

It is another example of the unfairness, the heavy-handed tactics and unfair interference of the state coming down on the rights of farmers to act collectively in their own best interests. The Conservatives are letting their ideology get in the way of the best interests of farmers to get the greatest rate of return for their product. The government is handing them over to be at the mercy of a few very powerful grain buyers who will be able to dictate the price. Five years hence, unfortunately, it will all be too late.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, no, I do not believe this is justified. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I move that the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: That Bill C-18, An Act to reorganize the Canadian Wheat Board and to make consequential and related amendments to certain Acts be not now read a third time, but that it be read a third time this day six months hence.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Guelph raises two important points. First of all, one of those big grain families, the Patersons in Winnipeg, was very honest. We have all seen the Paterson grain elevators across the prairie region. When asked whether he thought getting rid of the Canadian Wheat Board was a good idea, Mr. Paterson, age 50, said, “We'll do better than we do now”. His family firm has climbed to more than $1 billion in annual revenues. He said, “Our best years were in the time before the Wheat Board and that pattern should reassert itself”. At least he had the decency to admit that he had been waiting anxiously in the wings for somebody to come along and do the dirty work for him, to abolish the Wheat Board so he can get back what he thinks is rightfully his, that is, a monopoly. Not a monopoly in the best interests of farmers, but a monopoly of the grain marketing where he can dictate the price just as he used to. It will be welcome back to the 1920s.

My colleague's second question was about the reserve fund. It was arbitrarily raised from $60 million to $100 million as the Wheat Board had requested. The government then ordered the contingency fund last week to be raised to $200 million. That means prairie farmers are being forced now to use their money to pay for the dissolution and restructuring of the Canadian Wheat Board instead of the government. If government is causing this problem, it should be paying the restructuring and closing costs which are estimated at $500 million as well.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that is a reasonable question. In fact, all we are asking for is that prairie farmers get the same courtesy and the same rights as Ontario farmers, in that we allow them to vote. When Ontario farmers chose not to use a single desk any more, it was the result of a democratic vote of all producers and by a small majority. They decided they did not want to use the single desk. Not a word was heard from us, not a word from the NDP, or CCF in those days. They made their choice democratically and we respected their choice.

The contradiction here is that the farmers in the western region, the Wheat Board region, were promised a vote and they have been denied that vote. We have no other avenue of recourse than to try to get our business case forward in Parliament.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

A valid point, Mr. Speaker. I will not do that.

We should have been able to hear from pro-Wheat Board and anti-Wheat Board farmers but we heard from none of them. We had two evening meetings of four hours each. The witnesses were mostly technical witnesses to explain what effect clause (a), subclause (b) would have in terms of the administration of the Wheat Board. However, there was no broad consultation.

Surely it is reckless and irresponsible to turn the Prairie economy upside down on its head without at least that basic level of due diligence. It is crazy. It is the act of an ideological zealot, frankly, to ignore all of those things that we should be able to do. It is infuriating to me.

The parliamentary secretary tried to walk us through some kind of a history lesson of the Wheat Board. I have a chart here, a convenient graphic illustration that we made up. I know I cannot show that to the House as a prop. However, in those periods of time when there was no single desk, the price of wheat went down. In those periods of time when there was a single desk, the price of wheat went up. During the time when it was a voluntary dual marketing Wheat Board, the price of grains went down. The time when it was a single desk, the price of grains went up.

That is the accurate history of the experience of the Wheat Board from the 1920s. It is disingenuous to try to imply otherwise. Those are the kinds of facts that we could have benefited from in our deliberation of this bill. We are just trying to do our job here but those guys are so overwhelmed by their passion to destroy the Wheat Board, by their irrational hatred of the Wheat Board, that reason, logic, economics, science, due diligence, oversight and scrutiny are foreign concepts to the Conservatives. They rely on the anecdotal information of their personal experience.

I can sympathize with the parliamentary secretary. If he had some disagreement with the Wheat Board, maybe he should get involved in the Wheat Board elections and change the Wheat Board from within or allow a plebiscite vote, a fair question and a fairly conducted vote. If that vote were 50% plus 1 for abolishing the Wheat Board, members would not hear a word from us. There would not be this push-back because we would have consulted farmers, they would have spoken and their voices would have been heard and respected.

However, the government will not put it to a vote because, I believe, it is afraid of the outcome. Whenever we do consult farmers, it is split, admittedly, but the majority has ruled and that has been the magic of the Wheat Board. Its universality has been its greatest strength and its success.

Having a voluntary Wheat Board, we know from actual experience, is chimera. It is a myth. It is some notion that the government is trying to project on its way to the full abolition of the Wheat Board.

It is funny how the Americans recognize the advantage of having the Wheat Board. In fact, there is evidence of that. I try to back up my comments with actual documentation as opposed to the ideological notions, the whims, the flights of fancy of the minister and his parliamentary secretary. The Americans recognize that it is a huge advantage to Canadian farmers, so much so that they have filed 13 separate complaints to the GATT and the WTO claiming that the Wheat Board is such an advantage to prairie farmers that is constitutes an unfair trade practice and should be abolished as such. They lost 13 times because the WTO ruled that there was nothing unfair about producers acting collectively to get the best price for their product and to reduce their transportation costs and to share the risk by pooling the risk, sharing the profits and operating on a non-profit basis.

That might be contrary to the best interests of Cargill and the for-profit grain companies, but it is certainly not a violation of any kind of trade agreements that Canada has stipulated to. It is just good business sense. They realize that in unity there is strength, that collectively they could get the best prices and reduce their costs. One of the main complaints that the parliamentary secretary has is that they bought some ships. They bought some ships in order to provide the best possible transportation costs to their clients, the prairie producer. It is a non-profit operation.

I heard one of the members, I cannot remember his name, the long gun registry guy, calling it “lifting the iron curtain from grain marketing”, as if it were communism. Perhaps we have gotten to the root of the Conservatives' hatred here, their ideological zeal against the Wheat Board. They view it as communism for prairie farmers to act collectively in their own best interests. Therefore, they think it must be stamped out. That is how goofy it is. They are laughing about it now, but we know behind closed doors that is how they view it.

In fact, the experience has been one of the largest and most successful grain marketing companies in the world, the guarantor of the best premium quality grains in the world. The Wheat Board has given Canada a branding and reputation that add value to our product. I guarantee, and this is one of the things that I can also back up with documentation, we will lose that top quality branding if American grain companies start mixing Canadian product with batches of American product in their marketing operations. We will not have the oversight of the grain commission. We will not have the intensity of the research that comes from the grain institute, that complements the grain production, that gives the Wheat Board the number one premium brand in the world and our reputation.

The grain industry is vital to the area that I represent, the prairie region. Grain is our oil, the backbone of our economy. This is going to constitute a transfer of wealth, the likes of which we have not seen since the big pharma drug giveaway by the Liberal government when it gave 20-year patent guarantees to pharmaceutical companies.

This is a transfer of wealth of a magnitude that we have never seen on the Prairies. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be taken out of the pockets of prairie producers and will be put into the pockets of the shareholders of the big grain companies that have been salivating over this market share ever since the Wheat Board was created. They never gave up. Just like the enemies of public health care have never really given up, they have just been waiting in the wings for somebody to come along and finally do their dirty work for them so that they can get that market share back.

Just this weekend, I drove down Wellington Crescent, the richest street in Winnipeg, and was reflecting on this change that is going to take place. Every mansion on Wellington Crescent was built by the robber barons in the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s, who gouged prairie farmers so mercilessly that they were forced into some collective action to protect themselves.

Those robber barons put on a nice disguise now. Villainy wears many masks, but none so treacherous as the mask of virtue. We will hear virtuous statements from the agents of treachery in this debate. We will hear the parliamentary secretary. Let us guess what his next career will be. He will be a member of the board of directors of Cargill. He probably has job offers already with any kind of luck. If he is smart, he is negotiating that on the phone as we speak. “Guess what? The day has arrived. We finally stamped out the Wheat Board”. Villainy and treachery. J'accuse.

We already know the experience of Brian Mulroney. Where did he end up? On the board of directors of one of the big three. Guess what his billings were from 2009 to 2011. His billings as a director of Archer Daniels Midland were $650,000. Normally, a member of a board of directors is not compensated $650,000 just for attending one meeting a year to vote on the compensation of fellow directors. He is delivering something. He is delivering the Canadian Wheat Board back into the hands of the robber barons who have been drooling over this market share ever since this important change took place.

It is a sad day for democracy when such an important and transformative change to the rural prairie economy takes place without even the scrutiny, the oversight and the due diligence of Canadian members of Parliament.

This is the tragedy here. Perhaps we should be sounding the alarm.

I was accused of using an obscenity on Twitter recently, while I sat here lamenting closure. The real obscenity is the calculated abuse of Parliament, disrespect for Parliament and even disrespect for the courtesy of presenting a reasonable case. The real obscenity is not asking a single farmer, or ordinary producer, to come as a witness before a parliamentary committee to speak for or against a bill that would change things forever. And let us have no illusions about this, this change is irreversible. We will not get a Canadian wheat board back if we do not like, in the next five years, what is going to happen to this one. Some people will be happy about that; maybe those who are lucky enough to have a large acreage right on the American border and who could drive their product down to some mill in Montana.

However, let us deal with some of the myths that the parliamentary secretary and his minister, in some free market flight of fancy, are sharing. They say that as soon as they get rid of the Wheat Board, all kinds of value added and secondary industry will spring out of the ground like mushrooms all over the prairie region.

First, there is the untruth associated with this. In the last 10 years, milling capacity has increased 50% in the rural prairie region and four new institutions have popped up for value added. It is not as though it is impossible.

At the same time, south of the border, the milling capacity increased 9% and there were no new installations.

They would have us believe that it will be nirvana, that for a nominal fee they could reach nirvana tonight, that old myth. They are trying to promise all kinds of changes that would occur overnight because there is one guy who is waiting to open his doors as soon as they get rid of the Wheat Board. Do members know why? Because he would be able to buy grain cheaper. The Wheat Board did not offer a premium to producers, because their mandate was to get the best price for farmers. The only way to get grain cheaper is to give farmers less for it. Is that in the best interests of the prairie producers?

That is only one of the inconsistencies in their argument. If we were given the luxury of time at a parliamentary committee, we could study many others. I guarantee that their own members would have serious questions about why they are ramming through this ideological crusade in the absence of reason, logic, a business case, or even an economic case of why it might be a good idea.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

I do not want to be heckled by the parliamentary secretary through my whole speech, Mr. Speaker. If I have to put up with that guy for my 20 minutes, I hope there will be some intervention from the Chair.

In the absence of any documentary evidence or business case from the parliamentary secretary, all the Conservatives have left are their dilatory actions to ram the bill through the House of Commons without even the courtesy or the respect for Parliament to give it the attention and the debate that it deserves.

Anybody watching this debate should know that this monumental change to the economy of the prairie region has been handled in a cavalier fashion and rammed through at every stage of debate. The parliamentary secretary tried to give us a little history lesson about the background of the Wheat Board. The history of the Conservatives' treatment of this bill is a story of deceit, misinformation, dirty tricks, treachery and now of denying ordinary parliamentary procedure and respect for democracy. I will itemize and defend everything that I have just said.

When the Conservatives were first elected in their minority government, they began to make unilateral changes to the Wheat Board. The courts ruled them out of order and indicated that they could not do it. They were frustrated. They imposed a gag order on the Wheat Board, something that is unworthy of any western democracy and more in keeping with a tin pot dictator in a banana republic. The Conservatives imposed a legislative edict, a gag order, on the directors of the Wheat Board. They were not allowed to say anything in defence of the Wheat Board's operations.

At the same time, they carpet bombed the prairie region with taxpayer funded propaganda containing untruths and half-truths or, at best, to be generous, anecdotal information about spot prices that occurred somewhere in Montana that the parliamentary secretary could not get his trucks to. Twenty million tonnes of wheat cannot be moved to foreign markets based on anecdotal spot pricing somewhere in Montana. That is why the Canadian Wheat Board is one of the largest and most successful grain marketing companies in the world.

It is reckless and irresponsible for the government to unilaterally dismantle this great Canadian institution without even having the respect and the courtesy to table a business case that it knows for a fact that farmers would be better off without. That is all we are asking for, that and the vote that the minister promised prairie farmers.

I have had many calls from farmers in all three of the main Wheat Board provinces. I have had none from B.C., frankly. These farmers told me that they voted Conservative, for whatever reason, but that they voted that way with the confidence that they would still get a vote on the future of the Wheat Board. They might have voted Conservative but they were pro-Wheat Board. The parliamentary secretary cannot deny that there is a significant number of farmers in that situation. The May 2 general election was not a referendum on the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. It was a general election on any number of other issues.

The government then gerrymandered the voters' list. This also is unworthy of any progressive western democracy.

The government provided misinformation, a falsehood, that the minister would allow a vote. On April 11, In the middle of the general election, the minister is on record as saying that he would allow a vote. He assured farmers that they would get a vote on the future of the Wheat Board. He told them that they could safely vote Conservative because he respected democracy and he would consult with farmers on the future of the Wheat Board. That never came about. I do not know what to call it without being ruled unparliamentary, but when someone deliberately tells someone else a falsehood we all know what that is called.

Perhaps the greatest insult of all is the fact that the Conservatives are ramming the bill through with what we call time allocation or closure. That means we will not be able to give this issue the oversight, the scrutiny and the due diligence that is our very job as opposition members of Parliament. We are supposed to, again, in a spirit of generosity where reasonable people can reasonably disagree, both sides, put forward our arguments and defend our arguments with robust and thorough examination and, hopefully, the best ideas gravitate to the surface and that becomes law.

In the absence of any of that information, we cannot do that job. We were hoping, at the committee stage, perhaps, we would be able to call witnesses, we would be able to call prairie farmers who are for the Wheat Board, we would be able to call prairie farmers who are against it, we would be able to call economists and we would be able to call experts in grain marketing around the world. We were denied any of that. They did not send it to a committee. They created a special legislative committee to study the bill in which we are not allowed to call any witnesses other than technical advisors to clauses in the language.

We would not have been allowed to call any one of the anti-Wheat Board farmers who are witnessing this debate in the galleries today. I wanted to hear their point of view. I wanted to--

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-18 at third reading.

I will simply restate what I said in my comments to the parliamentary secretary. This is one of those debates in the House of Commons where reasonable people can reasonably disagree. There are two sides to this debate. When the issue was put to a vote of prairie farmers, the result was split. Some say that it was 60:40, some say that it was 40:60 and some say that, if the right information had been distributed to them so they could have the legitimate facts, the vote would have been higher.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the most charitable statement we could make about the government's ideological crusade to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board is that it is one of these issues where reasonable people can reasonably disagree on what the best options are for prairie farmers to market their grain. I am perfectly willing to have this debate on that level. However, it is almost impossible to have a reasonable debate when the other side will not conduct itself based on reason, logic, impact studies, empirical evidence and economics. It seems to be solely driven by the personal anecdotal frustrations of the parliamentary secretary himself.

When we ask for the cost benefit analysis and the business case for abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board, there has been absolutely nothing tabled anywhere, within or outside of the House of Commons. The Conservatives simply say anecdotally that when they go back to their neighbourhoods and talk to their immediate neighbours, they are all for getting rid of the Wheat Board. That is not scientific.

We were promised a vote, a plebiscite, of all prairie producers. We would be perfectly happy to be bound by such a plebiscite.

I ask the parliamentary secretary, is the only research document he has that outdated one done for the province of Alberta a number of years ago? We have the empirical evidence that the Wheat Board gets the best possible price for prairie farmers for their grain. Where is the evidence to the contrary? Where is the business case for abolishing the Wheat Board?

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, perhaps in light of this information it would be fitting for you, as the Chair of this place, to remind everyone in the gallery that they are not allowed to clap in the gallery. They are not allowed to lean over the edge. They are not allowed to drop paper. They are not allowed to make any noise. They are not allowed to jeer or boo.

If the government is parachuting in a bunch of people to try to disrupt Parliament, perhaps we should put some order into this debate at the front end, instead of allowing the Conservatives to come in here and steamroll over the rights of Canadians with their undemocratic legislation and to disrupt Parliament with a bunch of goons and stooges they parachuted in here and paid for.