Agriculture committee  I think you have to ask yourself this. What is the goal of this capital gains exemption? Is it to provide tax-free savings for farmers to retire, or is it to actually assist, in theory, selling your land cheaper to your children, for the next generation of farmers coming in? If it's the latter, if you want to look at increasing it, you may want to just think outside the box and say that if you're actually selling it to a younger farmer or someone in your family coming in, maybe there could be a higher exemption, versus just selling it to a neighbour who's going to be a larger farmer.

Agriculture committee  There are a couple of things going on. First, we have the Canadian rail shippers coalition. We represent about 90% of the freight revenue of CN and CP. This is the critical mass that we've had to keep pressure on the government and to keep pressure where it had to be to get this rail service through the system.

Agriculture committee  The committee that was just recently appointed by the government includes the associations. It's the Keystone Agricultural Producers, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, the Grain Growers of Canada, and Pulse Canada. It's the actual associations that have farmer representatives or representatives from the staff of the farm groups who are very knowledgeable in transportation.

Agriculture committee  Yes. The Port of Vancouver is there. I believe all the ports are there, but I don't have them in my head.

Agriculture committee  There's still a lot of speculation, but we have a long history of cooperative spirit on the Prairies. I believe that people will use the Wheat Board. Whether it's for a third or half or two-thirds of their wheat, I believe people will use the board. There has been a poisoned atmosphere, and I won't point any fingers.

Agriculture committee  As was mentioned, the farmers want to make their living. We don't want a cheque from the government and to have to rely on that. Most farmers are very entrepreneurial, so whatever can be done, like the professional skills development on how to start a new business, those sorts of training and extension work—those are valuable pieces.

Agriculture committee  We have an excellent example of that in Saskatchewan. The largest pulse processor and exporter has family ties throughout the Middle East. Here, business is sometimes done dollar to dollar. If I don't like Mr. McKay's store, I'll go to someone else's store, where it's a little cheaper.

Agriculture committee  What I'll say is that we're pleased to see him there. I would say in fairness to Mr. Easter's comments, it did seem to take a very long period of time. On the other hand, towards the end of it we said to the government, “You know what? If you're having trouble finding the right person, we're not going to open this act and do this again for 20 years.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  I would say that moving to the clusters was actually like starting something brand new. This is probably the biggest change we've seen in how research funding was allocated in years, so I think if we look at how those are going and say, how could we make that better, or is that the model?

Agriculture committee  There's a guest who can't see us all the time.

Agriculture committee  It's not a political answer, but it is a little bit of both. I think there has to be some of that blue-sky work out there. It seems a little crazy at the start, but eventually you discover some stuff. Then there has to be the other piece, as Mr. Surgeoner also mentioned, where you tie it in.

Agriculture committee  Sure. We have a board meeting next week and I'll put this on our agenda.

Agriculture committee  I think we want to see the Wheat board being as successful as it can be in the new environment. We do want to see that. So the five years of guarantees that are being provided, if they have good people in there.... We do want to see the pooling options. I have three quarters of wheat in this year, almost 500 acres of wheat on my farm.

Agriculture committee  I have to say we probably haven't spent much time on that. Where we think the railway should be using technology better is in letting us know when the trains are going to arrive. What happens now is that the grain elevator says the train will be there Thursday at noon, so the elevator manager has people like Randy Hoback, or whoever the farmer is in that area, gear up to haul their grain in to make sure it's in place.