CWB now a part of Freedom of Information

[AdamSmith]

Accountability Act clears final Senate hurdle, royal assent expected next week

BRUCE CHEADLE

OTTAWA (CP) - The Conservative government's showpiece accountability legislation has finally cleared the Senate and been returned to the House of Commons.

With all-party support in Parliament, the sweeping act is expected to be swiftly passed into law before the Commons rises for the winter recess next week.






The Accountability Act met some resistance in the Liberal-dominated upper chamber, where senators proposed some 150 amendments after weeks of hearings this fall.

That led Treasury Board President John Baird to repeatedly charge that the unelected Senate was stalling the legislation and thwarting the will of Parliament.

Ultimately, some 90 of those Senate amendments were included in the final legislation that went to the Commons on Thursday.

"I felt that this was as much as we could get at this stage," said Liberal Senator Joseph Day.

"This justifies the work that we've done. We've been vindicated."

The bill is expected to get royal assent as early as next Tuesday.

Many of the accepted amendments simply clean up sloppy drafting in a hastily drafted bill that swiftly cleared the Commons last spring.

Others amendments - despite actually beefing up the legislation - were deemed offside by the Conservatives, who campaigned on improved government accountability as a response to the sponsorship scandal.

For instance, the Senate failed in its bid to raise the amount of legal costs the government will cover for whistleblowers, which the act sets at $1,500.

Day said that's not enough to "open a file" at a lawyer's office and wanted the limit raised to $25,000.

Senators also failed in their bid to reduce the large number of exemptions the government can use to shield documents under the Access to Information Act.

The upper chamber wanted to keep the Canadian Wheat Board exempt from access-to-information requests, but Day said that was a non-starter in the current super-charged political atmosphere surrounding the grain marketing monopoly.

One significant Senate proposal that was accepted was the removal from the act of a single ethics commissioner for both Houses of parliament. That clause has been dropped, meaning the status quo will continue.

[AdamSmith]

The upper chamber wanted to keep the Canadian Wheat Board exempt from access-to-information requests, but Day said that was a non-starter in the current super-charged political atmosphere surrounding the grain marketing monopoly.

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS!


HMMM, NOW LET'S SEE, WHAT DO I WANT TO PUT ON MY CHRISTMAS WISH LIST?

[craig]

While I would agree that this is good news what does this really mean. What imformation will be available( CWB) and how to we access this information.

[agstar77]

I don't see any good guys.

[silverback]

If there is nothing to hide, then what is the problem?

The first thing to check might be the number of paper shredders purchased since January.

[SASKFARMER3]

Looks and smells like a ENRON. Staff is putting in overtime shredding all documents.

[agstar77]

Canada Post , Via Rail, EDC and Public sector pension investment board were given extra protection from the act . How come? The CWB, a non governmental agency was not.

[parsley]

agstar, there is absolutely no reason why there should not be transparency.

For example, the Minister can give orders to the CWB and farmers need to be able to access information that will shed light on dealing with those orders.

Another example agstar, the CWB worked out a secret little deal with the big feed mills to allow the feed mills to bypass Board marketing and Board pooling. Secret. No farmers were told.

Any single-desker in his right mind would want it exposed that the CWB were allowing the big mills to buy directly from the farmer and bypassing the Board and export what the farmer himself could not!

REAL single-desk committants would have publically opposed the CWB creating the Export Manufactured Feed Agreement export licenses which legally allow the CWB to allow the big mills to bypass pooling.

And I want to find out who the Director was that made the motion to create the EMFA. Was he a single-desk Director? Is that Director still serving on the Board? As such an avid single desk supporter, I am sure you will be intolerant of such a hypocrite, too.

There should be absolutely NO reason why the CWB should not be open and willing to be transparent to farmers.

Parsley

[agstar77]

Transparency is good as long as it does not involve commercially sensitive material. The government should pay for the extra work to satisfy any of the requests.

[JohnKenneth]

i'd like to see liberal party donations, especially compared to other parties.

[parsley]

agstar, I'm glad that you are starting to see that costs are an important issue for farmers; then you will agree that the Federal Government should pay the cost of national licensing, just as the Act requires them.

Parsley

[agstar77]

Costs are important , that's why I'd rather see a 250 thousand ceo for the CWB than a 1 million Ceo at a CWB II. How long would farmers tolerate that?

[parsley]

Quotong from todays's StarPhoenix, has Director Ian McCreary as saying, " there's no such thing as a "dual market" that would have the wheat board as one of the marketing options, but rather an open market that will be dominated by a handful of major players."

Somebody should tell this boy that the major players are marketing all the West's EMFA feed grain cause the CWB agreed it was a hell of a good idea.

Somebody should tell this boy that we have dual marketing alive and well.

Somebody should tell this boy the CWB is still alive.

What is good for the Board and good for the feed mills should be good for the farmer.

Somebody should tell this boy that in order for the CWB to be believable, he'd been practice consistency in his arguments.

Parsley

[AdamSmith]

Access to information is important because the current batch of directors and staff refuse to be accountable to farmers and refuse to offer real answers to our enquiries. This now offers us a bit of leverage to get answers. We can now go around them to find the information we’ve been asking for. Like where is the proof of a Premium? What are the cost breakdowns? Are we getting value for money?


I want to find out why I had a $5.75 t Adjustment Factor charge on my Basis Price Contract and Fixed Price Contract. The accountable only to farmers are not accountable on this issue. No explanation, just a new charge that appeared out of nowhere. I want to see if this was something that was approved by the B of D and I want to know the rational for a new out of the blue charge.

I want to see the communications dept. cash flow statement. Money coming in, money going out. Let farmers make decide if were getting value for money.

I want to see the financials surrounding the contingency fund. That $50 million dollars of farmers money being withheld. Where is it? What is it being invested in? Is there an expense account associated with it? What is the percentage breakdown of forced contributions between PPO program farmers and pool account farmers? Where does it go? Does it leave my pocket and end up in someone else’s?

Access to Information will now allow farmers to judge the value of the cwb with real information; it is the beginning of the end of the ideological battle. If the CWB has been good sound managers of farmers money they will benefit by revealing this information, if it is found out that they have been irresponsible and corrupt, it will only hasten their demise even as a voluntary institution. And there isn’t a damn thing Dion/Easter/Orchard can do about that.

[melvill]

Actually AS, as I understand it, the adjustment factor was always a part of basis but it wasn't visible. It was separated out from basis for the 06-07 crop year to make it more visible for two reasons:
1. so that producers who wanted to buy their way out of contracts could easily see where the charges were coming from, and
2. so that the effect of early sales on the basis was apparent.

I'm much happier with the adjustment factor being visible. Too bad it wasn't there right from the beginning. I have a chart showing the actual adjustment factor amounts and how it affected basis in the 05-06 year. I would like to have seen that chart for that year and all previous years provided on the CWB web site.

Another thing I'd like to see as visible is the discount - for time value, risk management and administration - that's part of the basis and fixed price contracts. You may remember that the discount was a separate charge the first several years when the PPOs first came out. Its visibility was removed based on complaints from producers as "just another complicating factor".