Dear Editor
I'm a bit puzzled by the lack of concern I note about the unprecedented use of closure that the Harper government has been using in the latest session of Parliament to push through its ideological agenda with the barest minimum of debate.
There are a lot of things that normally go on after the introduction of any legislation, including various ways to improve it, as well as to discover reasons for not passing it. Simply using the bully-boy tactic of closure, thus limiting further consideration or reconsideration of the legislation actually subverts the real purpose of having a parliament in the first place. That purpose is to make sure all legislation is fully examined and considered before it is passed.
The latest example is Bill-C18, the legislation to kill the Canadian Wheat Board.
The CWB has been, through mandates of various governments over the past few decades, a champion of the family farmer in western Canada. It has been a major factor in keeping prairie family farms continuing to operate sustainably and to continually turn out the best and most marketable wheat in the world. It has done such a good job forCanadian farmers the big corporate grain companies have been trying for decades to destroy it. It has become the champion for the use of the Port of Churchill for shipping grain to Europe. Unfortunately, it now looks as if the corporations have won, and the little guys have lost again.
The Harper government is, again, evoking closure, determined to pass the legislation before Christmas.
Once again, the Harper government is closing the doors on debate, this time as to whether the CWB should continue to run as a representative of the farmers - a modern marketing organization controlled and operated by farmers themselves - or to become an empty symbol of what it was, with a board appointed by the government to preside over its demise.
In many other ways, our Conservative government has been making our present parliamentary democracy less democratic. For people who may care about our democratic institutions and the effects of that kind of action, this should be a wake-up call.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
