Manitoba’s federal opposition politicians have lined up against what they call the Conservative government’s “ill-advised rush to fundamentally transform the grain sector.”
Winnipeg Liberal MPs Anita Neville and Raymond Simard and NDP MPs Pat Martin and Judy Wasylycia-Leis appeared Thursday at a press conference with provincial Agriculture Minister Rosann Wowchuk, Canadian Wheat Board farmer-director Bill Nicholson of Shoal Lake, Man., members of the “Save My CWB” farmers’ group and Hudson Bay Route Association president Arnold Grambo to catalogue federal Ag Minister Gerry Ritz’s moves on the CWB and Canadian Grain Commission within the past month.
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The politicians said Ritz has threatened to legislate an end to the CWB’s single marketing desk for Prairie barley; introduced legislation to “gut” the Canadian Grain Commission, which “completely ignores the unanimous recommendations of an all-party Parliamentary committee for reform of the CGC;” decreed an end to kernel visual distinguishability for wheat, despite “broad consensus” that a new mechanism to identify wheat varieties can’t be developed before 2010; appointed his former boss, ex-Reform MP Elwin Hermanson, as chief commissioner of the CGC; and “oversaw the firing” of Deanna Allen, the CWB’s vice-president of farmer relations and public affairs.
“This Conservative government is putting the future of farmers and of all
Canadians who benefit from grain at risk,” said Ken Sigurdson, spokesperson
for Save My CWB. The CWB’s Standard and Poor’s credit rating
actions, he said.
“We call on Parliament to reject this ill-advised and poorly prepared legislation that will gut the Canadian
Grain Commission and put grain exports at risk. Parliament should send the
government back to the drawing board to get this bill right,” said Howard
Willems, vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s (PSAC) Agriculture Union, in a joint news release. The union represents employees at the CGC, Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
In a separate release Thursday, federal Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter urged Ritz to give Prairie farmers “a clear and honest choice” if he proposes to make changes to the CWB.
“It is up to farmers to decide the future of the CWB,” Easter said. “Producers must be given the authority to decide the fate of the Board, not the bureaucracy, and certainly not this Conservative government.”
“The Conservative government continues to ignore the law and the courts so it can impose its right-winged ideology on prairie farmers,” said Regina-Qu’Appelle federal Liberal candidate Rod Flaman, an Edenwold, Sask. farmer and also a CWB farmer-director, in Easter’s news release.
Easter reiterated that the party had a private member’s bill before the House of Commons to require government to consult the CWB’s board of directors before making any significant policy changes to the CWB; that the CWB’s 10 farmer-directors be able to name two of the five appointed directors who are currently picked by the federal government; and that “any producer vote must use a secret ballot and feature a clear, specific question.”
But as the Winnipeg Free Press reported Thursday, a solid Liberal/NDP front on the CWB issue may not last so long. At the Winnipeg press conference, NDP MP Pat Martin said a Commons vote on Ritz’s CWB-related legislation should be a confidence motion and he challenged Liberals to vote with the NDP.
But Martin told the press conference that he doubted the Liberals, who have just two Prairie MPs outside Winnipeg, would want to force an election by way of a confidence vote. The Free Press quoted the Liberals’ Ray Simard, at the same press conference, as describing Martin’s comments as a political cheap shot.
