Wayne Easter

[Canadian Wheat Board, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the Wheat Board, the government just cannot help but be deceptive.

Finally, after relentless pressure and after his gag orders, propaganda campaigns and firings, the minister has put forward nothing but confusing questions. One report called them intellectually dishonest.

The House supported questions written by western farm organizations. Why has the minister ignored the will of the House and why is he attempting to perpetuate a fraud on farmers with deceptive questions?

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the comments of the member for Wild Rose. I respect the member very much, but the key question is whether farmers should collectively be able to have the freedom of choice to decide on their marketing institutions and its authorities. That is what we are talking about, the freedom of choice to decide collectively and abide by those rules.

I would correct the member on one point. His interpretation of what happened on the open continental barley market is certainly different from mine. The studies have proven that the open market did not return to the producers the same amount as it would have if they went through the board.

Is the member for Wild Rose suggesting that in Canada we should not allow marketing through institutions or marketing boards collectively? Is that what he is saying, that we should not allow marketing through institutions or marketing boards collectively, that farmers should not have that choice?

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Would the member opposite tell us how many wheat and barley producers are in the riding of the Minister of Agriculture? I believe there are none.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Richmond—Arthabaska said in his remarks that even though he is from the province of Quebec he has a responsibility to examine the issue regardless of where he is from. I want to congratulate him on withstanding the attack that we get consistently from government members, which is that because we do not happen to be within the prairie region, then obviously we should not be speaking on the issue. I think that is unfair on the part of those members, and I think it is because they do not have evidence to defeat our argument, so they can only attack us personally. That seems to be the Conservative way.

I want to expand on the question of supply management, which my colleague asked the member about, because supply management is certainly one of the strong industries in Canada, whether it is in dairy, turkeys or eggs. Supply management is huge in the province of Quebec, where the member comes from. He mentioned in his initial remarks that the key as it relates to the Wheat Board relative to supply management is that the government is moving to prevent collective marketing.

I think my hon. colleague asked if we can believe the minister. I do not think we can. We cannot believe the government. We know how honest the Conservatives were on income trusts; they said they would not do anything, but they did. We know that on the Canadian Wheat Board issue the member mentioned the hundreds of letters that he is getting, as I am, from Conservatives who are saying they never thought the Conservatives would do this. They thought they might make some changes but not set up a structure that would destroy the board.

What would the impact of this be on primary producers in his province in regard to what is truly the government's next step? The ideology of the Prime Minister is to go to the open market. That is what he is doing here. He does not care what producers say. He has not allowed them their democratic rights. He has put gag orders on the board, firing the CEO. What does the member for Richmond—Arthabaska think the impact will be on farmers in his province when the Prime Minister gets to his next step, which is--

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to look into the accusation that the member opposite made relative to Mr. Chatenay coming before the committee.

I have before me the original notice of meeting for the December 5 meeting that the chair eventually cancelled. The timeframe on the bottom of this notice is dated November 24, 2006 at 4:14 p.m. If you want a copy of that, Mr. Speaker, I can give one to you. Mr. Chatenay's name is not on that witness list. The parliamentary secretary is dreaming in Technicolor on that point.

The parliamentary secretary is accusing the opposition of taking charge of the committee. The minister himself in his presentation to the committee asked the committee for suggestions. I will ask the parliamentary secretary a simple question, is that not true? He did. The committee is doing its work and providing him with advice in terms of what the question should be.

I have another question for the parliamentary secretary. Adrian Measner, the CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board, is about to be fired. He is a man of credibility with over 33 years in the grain business. This is what he said to the committee:

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.

The gentleman opposite is the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board. What Mr. Measner is saying in simple terms is he has been told by the minister he can break the law and keep his job, or he can maintain the law and lose his job.

Would the parliamentary secretary tell us, is that still the position of the minister, or is the minister going to allow this man to remain in that job? Mr. Measner has lots of credibility. He is still supported with the confidence of the board of directors. In fact, he was just reappointed in 2005. He has the full confidence of the board of directors in terms of maintaining his position as CEO. Will the minister say today in the House that that man should remain in that job so that he can continue to do a good job for western Canadian farmers?

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

The Canadian Wheat Board does give them some power in the marketplace.

Yes, the returns are low out there from the grain industry. The Canadian Wheat Board allows Canadian farmers to maximize those returns back to primary producers in the industry through its marketing power. Of course it is not going to ensure them a profit; however, it is going to ensure them the greatest share of the returns that are in fact out there.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question and the first part of the member's remarks noted that I happen to be from P.E.I. I spent 17 years in western Canada. I have probably been on a heck of a lot more farms than that particular member who happens to live in the west.

As far as promoting national marketing agencies, we have done it. We promoted a national potato board; however, the government of the day, and it was the Trudeau government I will admit, would not put it in place.

In terms of low farm incomes, I did a study and I would refer the member to it. It is called “Empowering Canadian Farmers in the Marketplace”. The member should put that under his pillow and read it late at night. He might learn something in terms of why farm incomes were low.

The reason farm incomes were low is because everyone else in the agricultural industries, from processors to chemical companies, to grain companies, to transporters and to financiers, everyone involved in the agricultural industry was making the biggest profits in the last two years while the farmers were making the lowest. Why? It is because farmers did not have power in the marketplace. That is why.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, when we look at cooperatives, the previous government was a fairly strong promoter of the cooperative system, both within the social housing community, the farming community and many others. However, there used to be a strong cooperative movement, the pool movement, in western Canada in the grains sector.

There used to be the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the Manitoba Wheat Pool and the Alberta Wheat Pool. They were wholly owned by the farming community and their assets were built by that community. Those pools as cooperatives no longer exist. They have been taken over. Archer Daniels Midland has a 23% share in one of them.

Those pools, when they were operating as cooperatives in western Canada, did their best to try to return economic advantage to the farm community because their shareholders were farmers. Today that is not the case. Some of the shareholders of the grain companies in western Canada are farmers, but many of them are not. As I mentioned, Archer Daniels Midland has a 23% shareholder in AgriCorp.

Shareholders are on the New York Stock Exchange. They come from around the world and they are not interested in the farmers any more. They are only interested in the profits to themselves. Therefore, the cooperative movement has been very much undermined in western Canada. The last barrier against being exploited by the grain trade internationally is the Canadian Wheat Board, and that is what the Conservative government is about to undermine and cut away.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member may farm in the west, but I do not know where he has been. As chair of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, he should know the power of the multinationals. It is not that they are moving in to do the farming. They are taking economic advantage of farmers.

Studies clearly have shown the benefits under the single desk selling approach through the Canadian Wheat Board. The benefits under a number of scenarios with the Canadian Wheat Board have been posted. The economic advantage to farmers collectively as a result of the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk selling approach and its ability to provide economic power to the farm community has not been refuted by anyone. The member knows that Canada's credibility in the international market is due to the quality grains that we export, or export through the Canadian Wheat Board itself. A lot of this will be lost should the Canadian Wheat Board be destroyed.

The multinational grain trade has faced 11 challenges from the United States. We have won every time the United States grain industry and the multinational grain trade has challenged the Canadian Wheat Board as a marketing institution because it benefits Canadian farmers. Now we have a government that will do the bidding of the multinational grain trade and the United States, undermining the board and taking power away from Canadian farmers. Those members should be ashamed of themselves.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I can understand that the member opposite does not really want the facts on the table.

In terms of the wording, I was trying to explain that the government is now using the words “marketing choice” because those words sound better, but it is really the same thing. It is a deception and the member knows it.

Let us look at what the minister had to say in Hansard on June 7 when he was not using the words “marketing choice”. He stated:

--during the campaign, there was a clear and honest question put forward. We said at the time that our party believed that there was a good future for the Canadian Wheat Board. It involves dual marketing....

In a moment I will get to why the government changed the words to “marketing choice”, because it really hides what it is doing.

The minister appointed a stacked task force that had no pro-Wheat Board supporters, only opponents. The chair of that task force was a very credible senior civil servant. This is what he had to say on what marketing choice means. In the report he stated:

“Marketing Choice” is a better term to describe the new environment than “dual marketing”. The latter term implies to some that the existing marketing approach (a CWB with monopoly powers) could co-exist with an open market approach. This is not possible.

The words changed because “marketing choice” is more deceptive. The report actually states that dual marketing is not possible. Those are the facts. Have the new government members not been saying all along that they will go to dual marketing? Did members of the Conservative Party not campaign on dual marketing? Did the Prime Minister not campaign on dual marketing? I quoted him a moment ago.

The truth is now out. By the minister's own task force, dual marketing is not possible. The task force says that marketing choice means the same thing, and it does, but it sounds better in the farm community. The Conservatives know that at the end of the day it will mean the end of the Wheat Board.

Let us turn for a moment to a group of academics who studied the task force report and looked at dual marketing and marketing choice. I will quote from a press release on that report. It states:

Though the task force report insists a new CWB "needs to have a high probability of success," the proposed changes to the CWB would not allow it to survive commercially.

Those are the words of Murray Fulton and Richard Gray. They go on to talk about the business case that is in the task force report and say, in conclusion, that there is no business case for a viable Canadian Wheat Board II. It would be unable to obtain the strategic assets necessary to compete. They go on to say:

There are at least four reasons for this.

First, without grain handling facilities, particularly port facilities, the CWB II would be completely reliant on the existing grain companies to handle its grain.

The CWB would be unable to provide guarantees to customers since the existing companies would much rather handle the grain themselves than for CWB II. And purchasing key facilities from the existing companies is not going to happen, since these players have no interest in allowing a viable CWB II to enter the market.

Since CWB II will have no significant strategic assets, it will not be commercially viable. Given the expectation that it will not be viable, farmers will have no incentive to purchase shares in it and, as a consequence, CWB II is unlikely even to get established. Thus, the only marketing choice that a farmer will have is, "To which private multinational grain company should I sell?"

What it comes down to is that we give up the multiple marketing choices and options that are available through the Wheat Board and we end up with one: sell to the multinational grain trade. That is the choice.

The Conservatives can play with the words all they like. They can talk about dual marketing and about marketing choice but at the end of the day there will be no other choice for primary producers in this country but to sell to the multinational grain trade, and that is no choice at all.

The government is taking away the marketing power from the producers that they have collectively had for years and leaving them at the disadvantage of the multinational grain trade.

The sad part of this is that we are seeing the Government of Canada do from the inside what the multinational grain trade has tried for years to do from outside the country: to do away with the Canadian Wheat Board and eventually destroy it. We now have a government in Canada doing that from within the country.

Simply put, the government's objective, which is the Prime Minister's ideology and ordering his ministers around, is to eliminate single desk selling.

While I do not think even government members realize it, it does mean that eventually we will lose the Canadian Wheat Board and lose that marketing power in the marketplace. Who gains? As I said a moment, it will be the international grain trade.

I will read two quotes from an article published in Inside U.S. Trade on October 27. The first quote reads:

The U.S. government for years through the WTO has tried to eliminate the monopoly powers of the CWB....

The second quote reads:

A U.S. wheat industry source said the timeline is not crucial to U.S. producers, so long as Canada eliminates the monopoly powers.

Who is overjoyed by the decisions that our government is making? It is the producers in the United States, the U.S. grain industry and the multinational grain industry. They are overjoyed by the steps that the government has taken to undermine the marketing power of grain producers in western Canada, an agency that gives them some market power and offers them a lot more choices than they would get when they only have the choice to market to the multinational sector itself.

I have tried to outline the net impact of the government's decision and the need for a clear question and for Parliament to speak to this issue. However, I want to tell the House what has basically happened from the time of the election until now.

What we have seen to date from the minister certainly does not instill faith that the government will do the right thing.

In all seriousness, I do not believe we have ever seen such abuse of ministerial power, unless it was the Coyne affair and the firing of the governor of the Bank of Canada by the then prime minister, John Diefenbaker, nor such a violation of democratic principles in Canada and such an undermining of the very laws that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and his parliamentary secretary took an oath of office to uphold.

I will go through what has happened. It started with the election campaign but the election campaign was not a referendum on the Canadian Wheat Board.

Section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act states that the minister should consult with the board and call a question of producers on changes to be made to the board. The Prime Minister promised something that he did not have the authority to provide, and that is right of producers to make that decision.

In any event we had the election. Shortly after in mid-summer, the Minister of Agriculture held a meeting in Saskatoon of anti-wheat board invitees. Even the Government of Manitoba, although it eventually went to the meeting, was not invited to participate. It was only invited to observe.

For other Canadians, what would they think if we were having a discussion on medicare and two provinces, say Ontario and Nova Scotia, disagreed with the Government of Canada, then a meeting was held but they were not invited to participate? Duly elected governments have the right to participate in that meeting. It was refused participation in that meeting by the minister. First, it was not invited, but it pleaded its case. Then it was allowed to go, but it had to sit in the back and observe. The minister then started the process.

For those who do not understand, the Canadian Wheat Board is made up of 15 person board of directors, 10 elected by producers and 5 appointed by the government. Always the previous governments have tried to provide balance.They had business people who had business understanding in terms of the appointed directors. However, the mantra of the government opposite on appointments to directors now is one thing. They must absolutely be opposed to single desk selling, and it made its first appointment on September 15.

On September 19, the minister appointed a task force to look at dual marketing. I have quoted from that task force report in which it has said dual marketing is not possible. However, the people who were on that task force were all opponents to the board. Even the Wheat Board directors were asked, but they did not attend because they knew it was a set-up. There were only opponents on that task force. No witness list was provided, no list of meetings, no economic analysis of any kind of what its recommendations would do.

As I quoted from Mr. Fulton, it is clearly a discredited task force by the academic community as a task force with one objective, to come up with recommendations on how to move away from single desk selling of the board without outlining the economic impact on the farming community. The reason it did this is the Wheat Board provides, and it is well known, an advantage to producers about $655 million annually.

On September 5, the election started for five directors of the Wheat Board. That is important. During that whole election campaign, the full power of the bureaucracy was out there propagandizing against pro-board directors.

On October 5, the government issued a gag order to the Canadian Wheat Board directors that they could not speak out and in effect would have a hard time doing their job.

On October 17, the minister directed that 16,000 farmers be removed from the electoral list itself, in the middle of an election campaign.

On October 26, a pro-wheat board director was fired so the government could replace him with an anti-single desk selling director.

On October 30, the task force report came down and, as we expected, it had no economic analysis and no list of meetings.

In November the standing committee agreed to hear from the president and CEO, but that eventually was cancelled and then was reinstated.

I know I am running out of time, but I will make a couple more points. This goes to the essence of what we are as a country. Because the Wheat Board put on its website a critique of the task force report so farmers would know the implications of that, on November 17, the Minister of Agriculture sent this letter to the board, another directive. It said:

I ask that you instruct the CWB staff to immediately remove the CWB Response to the Report of the Task Force on Marketing Choice that was posted on the CWB website on November 6, 2006.

In other words, the minister went so far as to ask the Wheat Board to remove from its website proper information that farmers should know on the impact relative to what the consequences of the government's decision would be to producers. That is a violation of freedom of speech and it is a terrible thing to see that happen in Canada.

The most recent event is that the minister is about to fire the CEO, a man who has had 33 years experience in the grain industry, has credibility around the world and is the chief salesman abroad, because he does not agree with the government's policy.

This is a farm agency and it should be allowed to operate as a farm agency. It should make its decisions as a farm agency on behalf of the farm community. The government should stop interfering in the activities of the Wheat Board and allow farmers to make the choice.

The questions we have presented as a committee are clear and unequivocal. With these, farmers could make a clear choice.