Hansard Speaks....

This week the questions about the Wheat Board are piling up. MP's from all over Canada are hearing from their constituents. Of course we have the usual players ..... important defenders all. I am concerned though , my MP has NOT spoken. You can have a good long look, there are 7 pages at least and many for this week. Where is your MP?-cg

A juicy sampling :

House of Commons Debates



OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

Monday, October 16, 2006

(1925)

[Translation]

Hon. Robert Thibault (West Nova, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, my topic of discussion today is supply management.

On June 7, I questioned the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food with a view to ascertaining how he planned to protect the supply management system in Canada.

[English]

Last week, like colleagues, I was in my riding and had a chance to speak to a lot of people, in particular to poultry and dairy farmers who are concerned about supply management and how we will protect them going forward in the future. One of the interesting questions they asked me was about how we saw the government's position on the Wheat Board and how the government was reacting to the Wheat Board. This is very interesting. This is the barometer that the Atlantic supply management people are watching, because it shows them how the federal government is going to--if it will--protect supply management.

Dairy farmers, chicken farmers and egg producers in Atlantic Canada do not want to tell western wheat producers how they should market their wheat and whether they should have a single desk or multi-desk system. That is not their intention. What they are concerned about is how the government is dealing with the western wheat producers.

They want to know if the government is listening to the producers or if it is starting with the preconceived idea of what it is going to do. These farmers see this as their barometer of how supply management will be dealt with. They remember the terms of the leader of the Conservative Party in 1998, the current Prime Minister, the terms denouncing the supply management model as a “government sponsored, price fixing cartel”.

What these farmers would like to know with respect to the Wheat Board is whether the Prime Minister is going to let each farmer vote. Is he going to follow the laws of our country and give a free vote to each farmer, not weighted in accordance with protection but everybody with a permit book having one vote in a democratic system? We know there is 73% support for the Wheat Board across the western prairies. Is the Prime Minister going to test that?

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