Wayne Easter

[Canadian Wheat Board, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we witnessed the tactics of the Prime Minister in attacking individual integrity, but it is far worse.

I have a copy of the minister's barley ballot and the government is violating the very tenet of a democratic society: the right to a secret ballot.

Why has the minister allowed traceable numbers on the ballot itself? Is the reason to hunt down farmers who would vote contrary to the Prime Minister's ideological agenda? Is it his intention to audit certain farmers, or is it just to threaten and intimidate those who disagree with the Prime Minister?

[Canadian Wheat Board, February 16th, 2007]

The government, Mr. Speaker, has no respect for farmers or for democratic institutions. Not only is the government undermining producer marketing power, not only do farmers continue to wait for the immediate cash it promised last spring, it is failing to assist producers in the southwest part of Saskatchewan who have experienced two years of severe drought. The previous government assisted drought affected producers under the cover crop protection program.

Does the government not believe in fairness? Does it not care about producers? Why will the minister not meet the disaster needs of drought affected producers in southwest Saskatchewan?

[Canadian Wheat Board, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is, the government's attacks to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board are not only hurting the board's credit rating and destroying farmers' ability to compete profitably on the international stage, and not only is the government's incompetence driving importers to question Canada's reliability, but its ideologically driven attack is now hurting the nation's credibility.

Standard & Poor's names the government 11 times as being responsible for the credit downgrade. Why is the Prime Minister allowing his personal vendetta to undermine Canada's economic credibility?

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, if we look back at the history of the previous Liberal government in dealing with the tragedy of 9/11, somewhere close to $9 billion was spent on security matters. I really do believe that we did find the balance between civil liberties and public security and we did it in a democratic fashion by consulting with people, not in an ideologically driven way as the current government is doing.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, if there is one thing about members on the government side, they never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

That party talks about law and order. I ask the former minister of justice this. Did the people who were jailed break the law of the day? Yes, they did. Conservatives talk about law and order. They are importing American justice into the country, not to deal with the cause of the problems, but because they think it is popular to do. Let us get some law and order and we will build a few more jails. Will that deal with crime? No, it will not. The fact is crime is a lot higher in the United States. The system the Conservatives are trying to import is not working.

In terms of the jail issue, those people broke the law. Farmers were supposed to market through a single desk selling agency, which study and study has shown benefits farmers in the amount of $622 million per year.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, it was direct manipulation out of the Prime Minister's office to fire a CEO who was respected around the world. As a result, Canadian farmers have been injured.

However, the impact on democracy is the fact that there were farmers electing directors to a board. They recognized the CEO. They re-implemented him as a CEO for a $6 billion corporation, but because of orders from the PMO, the man was fired. That is an affront to a democratic institution.

The government has flatly refused to respect the demands and wishes of western grain farmers, as expressed through their organizations and the elected process set up under legislation in 1998. Worst, it has undermined and manipulated the right to democratically decide the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. It is costing economically and it is costing us dearly.

I have talked in the House before about Standard & Poor's lowering the credit rating of the Canadian Wheat Board. In its two page document it names the new Government of Canada as responsible for that lowered credit rating not once, not twice but eleven times. It says:

Since then, the government has banned CWB from advocating on its own behalf--

The Government of Canada put a gag order on a democratically farmer elected board. It has terminated the employment of the Canadian Wheat Board's president and CEO.That is a terrible deed.

It goes on to say:

--Standard & Poor's expects that government support of Canadian Wheat Board will continue to deteriorate as long as the current government lasts.

We are seeing an ideologically driven Prime Minister forcing his will on a democratically elected farmer institution that has been in place for three-quarters of a century, that markets on behalf of farmers and that brings an increased economy of roughly $622 million annually, according to studies. We are seeing the Prime Minister imposing his will against that agency just because he does not like it. That is an affront to democracy.

Has the government demonstrated a contempt for western grain farmers in Canadian institutions? Absolutely.

In the course of the Wheat Board director elections this past fall, the minister decided that he should manipulate the election. First, he had the gag orders, then he changed the voter list, taking 16,000 farmers off of it after the election was underway. In spite of those threats and undemocratic interventions by the Government of Canada, farmers returned a majority of pro-board directors in the election. Four out of five of the elected producers were in fact strong supporters of single desk selling.

However, it gets worse. We in the House have been long calling for a clear vote on the future of the Wheat Board on barley and wheat. In fact, the farmers put forward what they believed should be a ballot with a question on it that was clear, concise, direct and not confusing. It passed the agriculture committee, was debated in the House and on December 12 of last year, in a vote of 165 to 121, the majority of members in the House voted that the government place before western grain farmers the question for which farmers had asked. What did the minister do? He ignored that. He showed contempt for the House. It goes on and on.

He now has put before farmers what I would call a fraudulent question. I will quote from a Winnipeg pollster that calls the plebiscite that the minister is holding now “bizarre”.

Scott McKay, president of Probe Research, said the language the Conservatives are using for the three options on the barley vote are not only inconsistent but also far from neutral...

“These people are extremely incompetent or they are diabolical”, McKay said of those who designed the ballot's wording.

There is no question that the ballot itself probably comes out of the Prime Minister's Office because he wants to manipulate that to get the answer he wants.

To sum up, the Canadian Wheat Board is a farmer run organization. It was set up in 1998 with a board of directors and five appointed directors. Farmers are supposed to be running that agency. The Government of Canada never intervened before with directives, but the current government almost, on a weekly basis, sends directives to that marketing institution.

There were five government appointed directors on that agency, appointed for their expertise in marketing and international business. What did the government do? The CEO was fired because he did not agree with the Prime Minister. He agreed with and supported the farmers. The other four have been fired. One vacancy was up, the rest were fired and ideological people, who do not like the Wheat Board, were put in their place. Is that called democracy? I certainly do not.

However, the Prime Minister seems to stop at nothing in terms of getting his way. We have seen gag orders, fired directors, appointed ideologues, a fired CEO, a propaganda campaign and now a question that is unclear. The government should get back to democratic principles and accept the will of the House and the question that it has directed toward the government.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, might I say the backroom deal by the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and the current Prime Minister?

If one is looking for the most dramatic example of the government's contempt for the common and acceptable practices of what governments are expected and obligated to do, one need only look at how the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and specifically his parliamentary secretary have conducted themselves with respect to the Canadian Wheat Board.

The Canadian Wheat Board is a Canadian institution, respected abroad as a reliable marketer of high quality wheat and barley and supported in Canada as a marketing agency that empowers farmers in the marketplace through single desk selling.

The government has attempted, through threats, intimidation, voter list manipulation, the firing of directors and the firing of the chief executive officer, to get the Prime Minister's ideological agenda across. He just does not like the Wheat Board because it markets collectively on behalf of farmers.

In terms of the CEO, he was doing his job. He was abiding by the wishes of the board of directors, who are elected farmers, farmers elected by farmers. In fact, the CEO had just recently had his mandate renewed. To put it simply, he was offered a choice by the Government of Canada. The choice was this: obey the law and lose his job or break the law and keep it. Some choice. It was the choice that Adrian Measner, our CEO, was offered.

Let me go back to Mr. Measner's statement of December 5:

I have been asked to pledge support for the government's policy of eliminating the single desk, barring which I will be removed from my job. It would seem to me that opposition to the single desk should be far better grounds for my dismissal than unwavering support for the laws of Canada.

Here we have direct manipulation by the Government of Canada, direct manipulation coming right out of the Prime Minister's--

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

--there is no longer a Conservative Party in this country. The Conservative Party was lost with the backroom deal of MacKay and the present Prime Minister.

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

I hear some heckling on the other side, but talking about the Conservative Party--

[Business of Supply, February 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Scarborough—Guildwood.

I am pleased to speak in support of the motion today, because what we are seeing is an ideologically driven Prime Minister imposing his will on Canadian values and Canadian institutions. In fact, in the process, he is destroying many Canadian institutions.