Grain growers in Western Canada are considered a large enough group that Prairie members of Parliament who grow grain can vote on issues that can broadly affect their farms.
Mary Dawson, the federal conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, ruled Wednesday that a clutch of Conservative MPs won’t need to recuse themselves from debating or voting on Bill C-18, the government’s legislative package to remove the Canadian Wheat Board’s single marketing desk for Prairie wheat and barley.
Opposition MPs had called this week for Dawson to issue an advisory opinion on whether Tory MPs who grow wheat and barley on the Prairies would be in conflict of interest on C-18.
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According to the Commons’ Conflict of Interest Code, an MP is not supposed to take part in debates or votes “on a question in which he or she has a private interest.”
However, Dawson noted, the code allows for exceptions where the matter in question “affects the (MP or related party) as one of a broad class of the public.”
“It is my understanding that there are some 70,000 grain farmers in Western Canada,” she wrote, and while MPs who grow grain would have an interest in the subject matter of C-18, that interest “is shared with a broad segment of the public.”
Dawson, a retired federal associate deputy justice minister, has been the federal government’s ethics commissioner since 2007.
