Monday, November 20, there was a debate in the Manitoba Legislature on the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. Manitoba Liberals voted to support the single desk for the Canadian Wheat Board. Manitoba's provincial Conservatives voted against a single desk for the Canadian Wheat Board. It is very clear where the provincial Conservatives stand - they strongly oppose the single desk monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board. Indeed, they are so strongly opposed to the single desk of the Canadian Wheat Board that they voted against it even before they had heard the results of the vote by farmers.
The text of my remarks follows:
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the government's resolution. First of all, I will indicate that we in the Liberal Party will support this resolution.
I will give my reasons for saying this in a moment, but first we feel that the "BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba make clear its support for the CWB's single desk" should have specifically mentioned wheat and barley and made sure that the resolution was very clear. We interpret it particularly to mean support for the single desk for wheat.
We will support this because we see that over the years the Canadian Wheat Board has provided major benefits for farmers and for Manitoba. Those benefits include better prices for wheat than the farmers would have been able to receive otherwise. They include benefits to Winnipeg as a centre of the grain trade, as a centre for the grain industry and for the economy of Winnipeg, for the employment that has resulted, for the taxes and revenue that come into the provincial government as a result, for the new technology that is developed that positions Winnipeg on a continuing basis as a very important player globally in the grain trade.
We see benefits in maintaining the Canadian Wheat Board in terms of the future of the Port of Churchill. We see that this has been an important port link for Manitoba, that it has significant potential in the future for commodities other than wheat and that in order to develop that long-run potential, that we see at this point that there is not a clear alternative to having the Canadian Wheat Board maintain its single desk for wheat.
We certainly believe that the Canadian Wheat Board can be improved, and I would add here that when I was a member of Parliament in the federal Cabinet, we made changes to the Canadian Wheat Board to allow the election by farmers of the majority of directors. We made sure that it became, as it has become, a farmer board, a Canadian Wheat Board that is directed by farmers for farmers and in the best interests of farmers.
We see that it is quite important to have a very strong voice in the industry for farmers, particularly with what has happened with Manitoba Wheat Pool, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, with the Alberta Wheat Pool. These used to be farmer co-operatives. They are no longer, and it is very important that the farmers have a commercial organization which works for them, on their behalf, and for the benefit of farmers rather than for the benefit of anybody else.
Improvements in the Canadian Wheat Board can certainly be made and, in fact, are being made by the farmer-elected board of directors. Those improvements, I would suggest, are particularly in the areas of value-added industries and the ability of secondary industries from seed processing to food processing to a whole variety of other areas in rural Manitoba. We certainly want these secondary industries to develop, and these secondary industries would include industries in the area of nutraceuticals and functional foods.
Clearly, if we are going to develop as a province, then we need the development of these secondary industries, and I know that farmer-elected directors like Bill Toews from Kane, Manitoba, working very hard to look at ways that the Canadian Wheat Board can continue to evolve and make changes as a single-desk marketer for wheat and barley in these areas of food processing.
A major reason why we are going to support the single desk for the Canadian Wheat Board is that the four-week-long study that was mandated by the federal Minister of Agriculture, Chuck Strahl, is short. It is short not only in terms of the amount of writing, but it is short in terms of the vision for just how the Canadian Wheat Board will survive without a single desk for wheat. I think that it is very important that there be a clear vision for how the Canadian Wheat Board would survive without a single desk for wheat. Farmers that I have talked to, whether they are for a single desk or for dual marketing, would envision, hope to have, even if the single desk is gone, a role, a major role for the Canadian Wheat Board.
The report which was done on very short notice in very short fashion failed to provide a clear vision for how the Canadian Wheat Board would survive if it no longer had the single desk for wheat and barley. Is the vision here for handling facilities, and have the costs and future for the Canadian Wheat Board been looked at carefully enough? The Wheat Board is somewhat different from the hog board, and certainly what is needed here is much greater certainty that if the Canadian Wheat Board lost the single desk it would be able to survive in a dual marketing system. I think it is a very quick and short report that was done and that what is needed is a much better and clearer vision of just what the Canadian Wheat Board is to become if there was not a single desk.
The future of the Canadian Wheat Board is clearly important. The future of the grain industry is clearly important to all of us, and we should have a very clear understanding of what's going to happen and how the Canadian Wheat Board will survive in a dual marketing situation before we move to get rid of the single desk for wheat. One of the points that is clearly important, and that is this, is that regardless of whether the Wheat Board has a single desk or dual marketing, we need for all the players in the industry a clear vision for what the future is going to hold, that people need to be able to plan, they need to be able to see where things are going, and this applies to farmers, this applies to people in the Wheat Board who are now considering whether they should stay there if dual marketing comes in because they're not sure if the Wheat Board has a future, and it applies to other players in the industry.
That is why we would argue that at this juncture there needs to be clearer decisions made, that we don't need horizons which are murky and cloudy, and that is why we believe that there needs to be a vote, and that is one of the reasons why, at this juncture, because there has not been an adequate presentation of what the role of the Canadian Wheat Board would be in a dual marketing, that the single-desk marketing and the security of the single-desk marketing for wheat seems the better option right now for Manitoba. That's why we would support this resolution.
I would like to add a couple of comments, stories, as it were, which illustrate the role and the importance of the Canadian Wheat Board. The first story is told by a friend of mine. He was visiting, I think it was China. He was looking at ships unloading grain, ships unloading grain at a port. On one side of the port there was a grain ship unloading, and there was huge, billowing smoke. It was actually chaff from the grain that was being unloaded. Asked where this comes from, and I think it was from the United States. It certainly wasn't Canada. Then on the other side there was another ship unloading wheat without any chaff, and that was the grain that came from Canada. That was a big difference, and that difference was shown in the value of what we as Canadians were able to get for that wheat because it was higher quality. That value was expressed then in the amount of money that the farmers got because the wheat was of higher quality, and because the Canadian Wheat Board was able to market it for a better price than competitors from other countries who didn't have as high quality wheat.
That is one illustration of why the Canadian Wheat Board has done a good job because it is able to market high quality wheat and deliver it, and do a good job of it. [interjection] Absolutely, this is what farmers grow and because there is a system here which includes the Canadian Wheat Board, we end up with a better price for farmers and a better situation for farmers here in Manitoba in terms of better prices.
I will give a second story. This story comes from China. [interjection] I am just winding up, but let me finish because this is an important subject. Now, this story comes from China, and it is a story about Canadian Wheat Board negotiators sitting across the table from Chinese negotiators. The Canadian Wheat Board came and, clearly, was interested in marketing wheat. The Chinese said: Well, we've got such a good crop this year that we are not really going to have to buy very much in the way of wheat. Obviously, the Chinese were trying to position themselves to get a good price in saying that they did not really need much wheat, but the Canadian Wheat Board representatives were able to draw up on the expertise in the Canadian Wheat Board, and they presented to the Chinese representatives: Look, here is what our satellite pictures show. There is a major area in China where you have had a drought and your production of grains is really low this year. We know that you are going to need Canadian wheat.
Right away, the Chinese turned around, and they said: We are going to have to start bargaining seriously. We know that you know that we need your wheat, and we had better start bargaining seriously. That is what happened because we had the Canadian Wheat Board with a lot of knowledge representing Canadian farmers and getting a good price for wheat for Canadian farmers.
Let us acknowledge the marvellous work that the Canadian Wheat Board has done over many years. Let us acknowledge the problems that were there when there was not a single-desk Canadian Wheat Board marketer. Let us acknowledge that we need a stable environment for marketing wheat, and that in the absence of compelling evidence there is an alternative will for the Canadian Wheat Board to do a marketing system which is substantial and which can work in the best interest of farmers.
Then, I believe, at this particular time we should be supporting the single desk for the Canadian Wheat Board and that is the way we will be voting on this resolution.
The next few days will see the election of the next leader of the Liberal Party in Canada. My choice is Gerard Kennedy. Kennedy is originally from The Pas, Manitoba. He grew up in Manitoba and went to high school in Winnipeg.
