Wayne Easter

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2011]

Simply put, Madam Speaker, it would be called a dictatorship. What we have in this country is an absolute executive dictatorship. I cannot understand government backbenchers, who are not the government. They think they are, but the government is the executive council of cabinet. They are members of the governing party, but they take their orders and hide.

The fact of the matter is that if the Conservative government is serious about giving grain farmers marketing freedom, it would extend to them the same right that producers have in every other sector of the agricultural industry, as well as society as a whole: the right to organize themselves into a bargaining unit with the negotiating clout to advance their economic interests.

That is all farmers are asking for. That is all we are asking for. We are asking the government to allow the vote that is specifically stated in section 47.1 so that if farmers wanted to organize themselves into a marketing unit to maximize their returns in the international marketplace, they could do it.

It is unbelievable. The Minister of Agriculture has never done a tour of the Canadian Wheat Board, other than to drop in once for about 15 minutes to see its marketing intelligence, its war room, and how it gains those returns back to producers from the international market.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I would love to answer the question.

The “brutal monopoly”, as the member calls it, is really the marketing system that in every study over the last 20 years has been shown to maximize returns back to primary producers far better than the open market does.

I read the member's remarks in the House. He talked about his grandfather, who was a grain producer, and how times were tough. He needed cash in the fall, but he was not allowed to sell because of the Canadian Wheat Board. That was true at the time. His point on the record was that his grandfather had to sell at a lower price in order to get rid of his grain.

Two things have happened since. First, the Liberal government of the 1970s put in place an advance payment program to allow producers to hold their grain so that they do not have to sell into a surplus market when they harvest in the fall. Second, the member admitted that his grandfather had to sell at a lower price. That is what will happen with the loss of the Canadian Wheat Board single desk: the lowest seller will set the price, in contrast to maximizing returns through market intelligence, as is done now through the Canadian Wheat Board single desk.

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg North.

The motion that is before the House today is:

That, in the opinion of the House, farmers have a democratic right to determine the future of their own supply management tools and marketing boards; and recognizing this right, the House calls on the government to set aside its legislation abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) single desk and to conduct a full and free vote by all current members of the CWB to determine their wishes, and calls on the government to agree to honour the outcome of that democratic process.

How could anyone in the House oppose that motion? The motion gives voice to western Canadian farmers, in a balanced way, to have their say on their marketing institution for the crops that they want to market.

I begin from the point of supporting the motion. Western grain producers and, I believe, our supply-managed commodity groups are at risk from the government. On the issue of whether western farmers have a right to vote in an honest plebiscite to determine the future of the Canadian Wheat Board, section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act provides for such a vote. In fact, the Wheat Board held a vote on its own, with 62% support, but the government is failing to abide by that section that is in the law of Canada. In my view, it is violating the law.

The only reason such a vote has not been held is that the government knows it would lose the vote, so rather than being defeated by western grain farmers, the government simply refuses to allow them the right to vote at all. In fact, the Wheat Board's greatest critic, and this is ironic--crazy, actually--is the Parliamentary Secretary Responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, who through his whole career as Parliamentary Secretary Responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board has provided misinformation. In fact, in his own riding, the farmer-elected director who won in that riding is pro-single desk and is against the parliamentary secretary's using his MP's office and his office as parliamentary secretary to propagandize against the particular director who won the election.

The legislation to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board single desk is now before a committee. The question the Conservatives have yet to answer is whether they will allow the committee to travel. If they will not allow farmers to vote, then will they at least allow farmers to have a voice and allow them to speak to the committee in western Canada?

The Minister of Agriculture has told the House that the spring election was a mandate to basically destroy the single desk. That is not true. That is wrong. The law of the land says it clearly, and farmers who voted in the election knew the law of the land. They felt they were going to have the right to vote and determine their own destiny on this specific issue. They may have supported the government on gun control and other issues, and I expect they did, but in western Canada they did not vote for one single issue, the Wheat Board. The law of the land at the time of the election stated in section 47.1 that they would be given the right to vote on their own destiny, and the government is ignoring that law.

During the election, the Minister of Agriculture told an audience in Minnedosa, Manitoba, “Until farmers make that change”--i.e., to vote for the removal of the single desk--“I'm not prepared to work arbitrarily. They are absolutely right to believe in democracy. I do, too.”

What was the minister doing? If he is not having a vote, then he obviously was not telling the truth.

That said, the government is deliberately betraying western grain producers in not allowing them a say in determining their own marketing institution.

I have heard the minister, his parliamentary secretary and others stand up in the House and say that the Canadian Wheat Board was brought in the way it is in 1943 and has not changed since. That is absolutely wrong. The board was changed in 1997 under an act of Parliament. It was designed at the time to give producers control, meaning that they would elect 10 directors and five would be appointed by the government. In other words, farmers in western Canada who market their grain would be able to determine their own destiny, run the Canadian Wheat Board and make the changes necessary, and there have been all kinds of changes over the last number of years exercised by those farmers.

Bill C-18, if passed, would do away with the elected directors of the Canadian Wheat Board. The fate and control of the board would be turned over to the five appointed government hats that the Conservative Party has put in place to do their bidding and destroy the farmers' grain marketing organization from within.

Let us look at the people the government would fire.

There is Stewart Wells. He is an organic farmer from Swift Current, Saskatchewan. He holds a Bachelor of Agricultural Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, has served eight years as president of the National Farmers Union and is a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool delegate. He would be gone.

There is Cam Goff. He is an owner-operator of a 5,000-acre grain farm and agriculture supply business near Hanley, Saskatchewan. He would be gone.

There is Bill Woods. He is one of the founding members of West Central Road and Rail, a large producer car loading facility that has provided innovative grain marketing options for producers throughout western Saskatchewan. He is also a leading advocate for grain shippers' rights. He would be gone.

There is John Sandborn, owner and operator of a 3,300-acre grain farm near Benito, Manitoba. John holds a certificate in management leadership from the University of Calgary and a Bachelor of Science from Brandon University. John was a founding director of the Parkland Crop Diversification Foundation and a district representative for Keystone Agricultural Producers of Manitoba. He is a former director of Manitoba Pool Elevators and Agricore Co-operative Ltd. He would be gone.

There is Bill Toews, owner and operator of a large grain and oilseed and specialty crop farm west of Kane, Manitoba. He has international development experience. He is a former director of Keystone Agriculture Producers. He served with the Manitoba Farm Products Marketing Council and the Prairie Region Recommending Committee for Grains subcommittee. He has a degree in agriculture and a post-graduate degree in soil science. He would be gone.

These are not small, outdated, out-of-touch producers who are afraid of marketing on their own; they are the best and brightest, elected by their peers to represent their interests on the only grain marketing entity that still belongs to farmers.

What would Bill C-18 do? It would turf them. They would leave the Canadian Wheat Board in spite of the fact that it is the farmers' grain and it is the farmers who would still be paying every last cent of the Canadian Wheat Board costs. This would leave the board in the hands of unelected government representatives with huge ties to the private grains trade, the very companies that stand to gain from the loss of the Canadian Wheat Board.

The bottom line here is that these producers were elected by their peers. They are not outdated producers. They are good producers who made the changes that producers asked for. Producers voted 62% in favour of maintaining that single desk selling agency. Eight out of ten of those directors are pro-single desk sellers. With the government's representation in the bill, without giving farmers a voice to have their say in the marketing institution, they would all be fired. Left in their place would be five directors appointed by the government.

Why are we seeing this in a democracy? Is the government's ideology just to ignore the facts and disallow the right of primary producers to have a say in their own destiny and the specific institution that they want to market their grain?

How can anybody, and especially those backbenchers in the governing party, sit there and allow themselves to be run by the top? How can they sit there and not support this motion by the member for Churchill?

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I just did an interview with Barry Wilson of The Western Producer and he asked me how long I had been involved with the Wheat Board file. I have been involved since 1973. I remember the Saskatchewan wheat pool at one point in time, the Manitoba pool and the Alberta pool, and how their whole system was paid for with no debt by prairie producers. They were big and powerful at the time and they were an economic powerhouse. Today, they are gone.

The Wheat Board is the core in the middle that protects prairie grain farmers from the big railways, from the likes of Viterra, from Cargill and so on. Viterra today may think it is big and mighty, like the Saskatchewan wheat pool did at one time, but I am saying in the House right now that within five years it had better watch out. Who will pay the price? It will primarily be western producers.

Who does the member think will defend farmers in western Canada? Who has the political and economic clout to do it if the Wheat Board is destroyed, as Bill C-18 would do?

[Business of Supply, October 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, this is not an issue specifically on what the member was saying regarding the Canadian Wheat Board. This is an issue of giving farmers their voice. In the current act under section 47.1, they have the right to determine their own destiny with a proper vote called by the minister on a question tabled by the minister. The government is disallowing that right.

In terms of the Ontario Wheat Board, farmers had the right to vote. In terms of supply management, farmers had the right to vote. In this case, the government is denying farmers the right to have their say which was granted to them by law in 1997.

What are the minister and members on that side afraid of? Are you afraid? The government has not won one election yet relative to the Wheat Board. Eight out of ten of the farmer-elected directors are pro-board and the government is going to fire them. Why do you not give farmers a voice?

[Canada-U.S. Relations, October 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of International Trade is becoming renowned for being surprised and disappointed when awakened to actions by our most important trading partner, the United States. He was surprised and disappointed with buy American, shutting Canadian business out and costing Canadian jobs. Now, after the bill being in Congress for 23 days, he is surprised and disappointed that the United States imposed a $5.50 fee on all Canadian entries by sea and air.

Would the minister surprise us and not disappoint us by standing up for Canadians?

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, if the member for Wild Rose believes what he said in his comment then let us put it to the test. Is there anyone in the country who actually believes that the only reason anybody voted for the Conservative Party in western Canada was because of the Canadian Wheat Board? Is that what he is trying to imply in the House?

I ask the member to put it to the test. Section 47.1 under the legislation says we ought to that. The Wheat Board says that it has 62% support on its plebiscite. Why will the Conservatives not put it to the test? Why are they taking the voice of western farmers, which was granted to them by law, away from them and not allowing them the choice to tell us their view? If they voted for doing away with the Wheat Board single desk, we would support it.

Second, does the member really believe that if thousands of trucks roll across the U.S. border, the 49th parallel, that the U.S. is not going to respond? People broke the law, they went across the international—

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, spinning off the question from the minister, it is not as bad as the government member tries to make us believe. As I mentioned earlier, there is far greater processing capacity for malting barley per capita, which came into place in the last number of years, three times as many in Canada as in the United States, whose producers have the freedom to market wherever they want. Wheat milling capacity in western Canada has grown by 11.8% in the last decade, compared to 9% in the northern tiers in the United States. Therefore, is not as bad as the member makes us believe.

However, there is an important question here. The government is basically saying that producers should have the freedom to market when, where and how they want, which is what, I believe, the minister said it earlier.

Does the member not believe that if that is the policy that is approached, it would completely undermine the supply management system in this country?

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, in the previous discussion, surely the government would extend the same rights to western farmers as it did extend to those on the Ontario wheat marketing board who no longer market under that board. They were given the right to make a decision. Western farmers have not been given that right.

I have asked my NDP colleague about one of the arguments of the government that this would be great for processing and that there has been no processing since the board was in place. The facts are these: Canada processes three times more malting barley per capita than the United States; wheat milling capacity in western Canada has grown by 11.8% in the last decade compared to 9% in the northern tiers of the United States; and four new western Canadian mills have been built during that period while the number of mills in the northern United States has remained the same. That has been with a board of directors of farmers in place.

The act, under section 12, says:

Every person holding office as an elected director of the Canadian Wheat Board immediately before the day on which this Part comes into force ceases to hold office on that day.

Have those farmer elected directors not done a good job in increasing processing capacity and in maximizing returns to farmers?

Why does my colleague believe that the government wants to get rid of those farmer elected directors and take their right away to be a master of their own destiny through their own marketing institution, as others in Canada are allowed to do, like dairy and poultry?

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, October 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, on that very question, what Bill C-18 does is it puts big brother back in charge, does it not?

Prior to 1997 the board was run by three commissioners. The government of the day changed it to allow an elected board of directors, five appointed and ten elected. Now this bill fires the ten farmer-elected directors and puts in place five appointed directors. Big brother is now in charge.

I would submit that there is a terrible conflict of interest.

One of the directors is a guy by the name of David Carefoot. He has served as chief financial officer for Viterra Inc. and spent six years with Agricore United. Viterra itself has indicated that breaking the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly could be worth 50¢ to 75¢ of per share value to Viterra.

Why is the government taking the fate and control of the Wheat Board away from farmers and turning it over to government hacks who are working for multinational grain corporations from the inside? Does the member agree with me?