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Tory MP's bill aims to end CWB monopoly

By: Mia Rabson

Posted: 02/11/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

MIKE APORIUS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Canadian Wheat Board: Tory target

OTTAWA -- The federal Conservatives are turning to their backbenches to make good on an unfulfilled election pledge to eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on prairie grain sales.

Bruce Stanton, MP for Simcoe North in southern Ontario, introduced a private members' bill Thursday which would allow prairie farmers to opt out of selling their wheat and barley through the wheat board for periods of two years at a time.

"For over 60 years western grain farmers have had no choice in marketing and distribution of their hard-earned crop," said Stanton.

Stanton's bill would allow farmers to notify the wheat board in the first three months of the year that they want to opt out of the CWB. They would then be exempt from the CWB for the next two years.

Stanton said it is not a decision farmers should take lightly but one they should be allowed to make. He said prairie farmers are already trusted to sell other crops on their own, like canola.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made eliminating the monopoly an election pledge in 2006. The government tried to do it by an order of cabinet but were stopped by the courts which ruled such a change had to be made by a vote of Parliament.

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz introduced legislation to eliminate the monopoly for barley sales only in March 2008 but the bill was never debated. It died on the order paper when Harper called the 2008 election and it was never reintroduced.

Part of the legislative difficulty facing the Tories was the fact the government knows it has no support for the issue from any of the opposition parties and cannot get such a bill through in a minority Parliament. But private members' bills are free votes which could mean the government could seek the votes it needs from individual MPs who would not be necessarily required to vote along party lines.

Stanton acknowledged his position in the line-up for private members' bills is one of the reasons he is bringing the bill forward rather than one of the MPs from the three prairie provinces.

Manitoba NDP MP Pat Martin dismissed Stanton's bill as a pre-election pandering to the Conservative base. "They know full well it won't go anywhere," Martin said. "Everything they've tried has failed."

Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said it's interesting the government would do this now just a few months after prairie farmers rejected the Conservative position by voting in another majority of board members who are in favour of saving the monopoly.

"This is just more of how this government operates," said Easter. "They don't let the facts get in the way of what they believe."

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2011 A6

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