Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate today. It is one of those very rare occasions when the Reform Party has turned its attention in the House to an agricultural issue.
Until very recently, day after day, week after week, month after month would go by when the Reform Party would hardly even mention anything having to do with agriculture. Suddenly in the last couple of weeks its members have asked a flurry of farm questions and have proposed this opposition day on the Canadian Wheat Board.
I suggest it is no coincidence that all this sudden attention follows a rather scathing article in the Western Producer newspaper on the prairies which tore a strip off Reformers for ignoring their agricultural constituencies.
I welcome whatever woke them up. I am glad to have the opportunity to discuss a serious and complicated matter, the serious and complicated business of western Canadian grain marketing.
This is a hugely complex and important topic. It involves a multi-billion dollar sector of the Canadian economy and the backbone of the prairies. It involves the livelihoods of 130,000 farm families across western Canada. They are spread across four provinces on over 80 million acres of farmland, in a dozen different land quality zones, producing upward of 35 million tonnes of wheat and barley every year, the best quality in the world, and delivering that grain to over 900 individual country elevator points, to hundreds of exacting Canadian buyers, and by truck, rail and ocean freight through at least five different ports to loyal customers in over 70 countries around the world. All that is in the face of always tough and sometimes fiercely predatory global competition dominated by some of the biggest transnational corporations in the world and all too frequently distorted by the meddlesome subsidies of foreign treasuries.
This business is no child's play. It is big business. It is deadly serious. It is a business in which despite all the odds Canada has established an absolutely unmatched reputation for excellence, especially in the last 50 years since the second world war. It is no accident that period of global success coincides with the existence and the longevity of the Canadian Wheat Board.
The board is not a buyer of grain. The board is a seller of grain. It sells wheat and barley on behalf of all prairie producers. Through the board farmers maximize their marketing clout so they can compete effectively around the world from a position of combined strength backed by the world's best grain standards, the world's best quality control system, the world's best market intelligence network, the world's best weather surveillance system, the world's best market development techniques, and the world's best before market and after market customer services.
These characteristics which are part of the Canadian Wheat Board system have generated remarkable customer loyalty and respect. They have helped to earn premiums from the marketplace. They have gained and retained market share for Canada.
In total prairie farmers account for about 6 per cent or 7 per cent of the world's grain production, but they occupy about 20 per cent of the world's grain markets. The board has accomplished this within the confines of world trading rules and regulations.
At the behest of the United States, the activities of the Canadian Wheat Board have been investigated not once, not twice, but at least three different times. Each time the board has been vindicated as a fair trading organization.
Our global customers have strong words of support for the Canadian Wheat Board. I have met with them in person in places like Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore and Sao Paulo. They have told me how they value their longstanding relationship with the CWB built on quality, reliability, consistency, mutual trust and respect.
They have told me that if Canada did not have the CWB but had a system like the one in the United States, for example, we would lose much of our distinctiveness. We would not have many of the qualities which set us apart and put us a cut above the rest. We would not have the key element of product differentiation which now helps us stand out in the marketplace. They might as well buy their supplies from Minneapolis, Kansas City or New Orleans.
This same sentiment about the board was echoed not long ago in Canada by Mr. Ken Beswick. A couple of months ago Mr. Beswick resigned as a Canadian Wheat Board commissioner in a dispute with the board about barley pricing. He was forthright in his criticisms that are clearly on the public record, but he was also forthright in his praise.
Just to balance the record, let me quote from the May 9 edition of the Manitoba Co-operator newspaper:
Beswick says he is, and always has been, a staunch supporter of the Canadian Wheat Board as a single desk marketing agency for export wheat and barley. He also says the so-called continental market proposed by some is just another word for an open market. While the feed and barley trade would likely see little effect of an open border, Beswick said he has become convinced it would be bad news for the malting barley producer.
The dynamics of the marketplace would probably cause Canadian prices to fall going into the U.S. market, Beswick said. We saw that, (during the brief time the border was open in 1993) and I think it would happen again.
I was one of the people who said it wouldn't happen and I was wrong-In a candid interview last week, Beswick condemned the extreme views which have polarized the industry between those who want no change to the board and those who want it eliminated. I have no patience at all for the lunatic fringe, he said. I think they do not help and I really lament what has happened to the industry I have spent my entire life in.
I think there are people out there who are not talking about the right things, he said. There are people who are taking my resignation from the board as something it was not.
I am in no way saying the board is not an effective marketer, he said. I think that it is among the best in the world at marketing grain. It stands toe to toe with the heavy weights out there in the global environment and I think from my window at the board I would not advocate the elimination of single-desk status.
The article concludes with the following quotation:
The single-desk seller is a powerful way to be. It is a powerful, powerful marketing tool in the world.
A number of questions obviously occur in the course of the debate. Do farmers on the prairies readily acknowledge the strengths in the marketing system we now have in place? Do they maintain the collaborative will to combine their strength through single desk selling? Or, would they prefer to go it alone as 130,000 individual sellers? What is precisely and commonly agreed upon as the definition of dual marketing? Is it physically possible to have the best of both worlds? Is it feasible to have two quite different marketing systems functioning effectively side by side without the one interfering with or undermining the other?
What about those apparently attractive spot market prices that appear from time to time across the border in the United States? The Canadian Wheat Board system now captures those prices for distribution among all prairie producers, together with all returns received by the board from every other market worldwide. In this day and age is that pooling principle still valid in the minds of farmers? Or, should individuals be enabled to collect those spot prices by themselves and for themselves, leaving a somewhat diluted price pool for everyone else?
In any given year the volume of wheat and barley we can move into the U.S. market is in the order of approximately two million tonnes, but we produce over 30 million tonnes. Relatively speaking, then, how much should we be preoccupied with the American market that obviously has some access problems for us? How much should we change our system to seize U.S. opportunities when they present themselves if that in some way compromises our global capability?
Are there distinctions to be drawn among wheat, durum, feed barley and malting barley in the way in which each of them is marketed? What about wheat board corporate governance, accountability, audit procedures, public information, flexible pricing, flexible pooling, value added processing or niche markets?
These are among the many questions in the debate about western grain marketing which require a thorough and thoughtful airing. They do not require bombast and bluster, not rumour and innuendo, not abusive language from the Reform Party or from those who would wilfully ignore the law. The issues are too serious. The consequences are too profound to play fast and loose on questions about grain marketing.
I know different groups of farmers hold widely differing views on these very serious issues. They hold their respective views with a great deal of conviction. The debate among farmers about these issues has been unfolding across western Canada for the better part of 25 years with varying degrees of intensity from time to time. The debate has become particularly acute in the past three or four years.
I hear from each side in the debate virtually every day. I listen very carefully to farmers on all sides. Last summer it was clear the debate about western grain marketing was quite literally going around in circles.
One day last year two opposing groups of farmers of equal size turned up at my constituency office in Regina to picket against each other. They formed a big circle and went around and around the office building, all of them picketing against each other together.
The debate lacked focus and structure. It lacked the most rudimentary foundation of a common base of factual information. It generated far more heat than light. It was all geared to lobby me and the government to a particular point of view when it should have been aimed toward farmers themselves, to persuade one another.
In these circumstances in July of last year I established the western grain marketing panel to give the whole discussion some reasonable framework. The panel consists of nine very strong individuals. Bill Duke and Avery Sahl from Saskatchewan, Jack Gore, John Pearson and Wally Madill from Alberta, Owen McAulay and Jim Leibfried from Manitoba, John Neufeld to provide the national grain trade perspective, all under the able chairmanship of Mr. Tom Molloy from Saskatoon with Murray Cormach from Winnipeg as executive secretary.
Anyone with any familiarity with western grain would recognize and acknowledge the vast depth of knowledge and experience represented by this eminent group of Canadians and their broad diversity of personal opinions from one end of the spectrum to the other. They have worked diligently and constructively together, taking on what was admittedly a very tough assignment. They have conducted themselves throughout this assignment with the utmost of integrity.
I asked the panel to do four things. First, to research, prepare and publish the necessary information to provide farmers and other stakeholders with all the facts about everything that is involved in the complicated business of grain marketing.
Second, to conduct a prairie wide series of open townhall meetings to ensure that everyone has reasonable access to all the relevant facts and figures and a full and fair opportunity to ask questions and express their opinions.
Third, to hold formal public hearings at which all of the various sides in the marketing debate can advance their arguments, present their supporting evidence and be examined and cross examined to draw out all the options, all the pros and cons, all the benefits, all the consequences of one marketing system versus another.
Fourth, to submit a report indicating what the panel has heard from farmers, what areas of consensus exist and what might be done to deal with those issues on which there is no consensus.
The first three of those tasks have been fully and successfully completed. The fourth and final task, the report, is in its final stages of preparation. It should be available within a couple of weeks.
This brings me to the peculiarity of the Reform motion that is before the House today. To have this marketing discussion can be useful but the Reform motion does not make a lot of sense, calling as it does for an arbitrary, pre-emptive strike by way of a legislative amendment on the eve of the western grain marketing panel report in just a couple of weeks.
We should not now pre-empt the process. We should not now cast aside the panel, ignore the input and the hard work of all of those who have participated, including several hundred farmers across western Canada. Even the Reform Party itself and the member who is sponsoring today's motion appeared before the panel and did not at that time make the proposal that he is advancing today.
When I set up the panel it was a serious initiative. It was not smoke and mirrors. It was and is intended to produce sound results. I hope and expect it will do so when we see the report very soon. Should there be changes in the grain marketing system? The answer to that question is obviously yes. Many ideas have been put before the western grain marketing panel. The Canadian Wheat Board has suggested several kinds of change. Strong board supporters in other political parties, like for example the premier of Saskatchewan, have also acknowledged the need for change and modernization. The important thing is to get it right. That is what the western grain marketing panel is all about: changes that make sense to the largest possible number of farmers in a fair, conscientious and thoughtful way.
When all of the facts have been aired, when everyone has had an opportunity to have their say, when all the arguments have been weighed carefully and all the information is in and analysed, that is what the western grain marketing panel is supposed to do. Once it provides its report we will all be in a position to make the kinds of decisions that are needed for the future.
Madam Speaker, may I conclude with one final thought? In making those decisions, let us be prudent and let us make sure that we do not end up throwing the baby out with the bath water.
