Mr. Speaker, in answer to my colleague from Yukon and the concern he raises about placer mining, as he knows, I had a placer mining claim in Yukon Territory at Benson Creek on the Dempster Highway.
I am well aware of the rules if a person disrupts flowing water for the purposes of placer mining. There has to be a series of settling ponds wherein the water runs clear by the time it has finished the operation.
In terms of interrupting the fishery, consultation is the answer. My colleague from Yukon I think would agree that with adequate consultation and accommodation of the concerns raised there can be an active placer mining operation and there can be fish habitat protection.
The first question my colleague asked was about the Wheat Board, a subject dear to my heart. I know we are going to hear more about it later tonight from the member for Malpeque. He is doing a late show on this very subject.
I come from the inner city of Winnipeg where the Wheat Board has its head office. We do not have too many head offices in the province of Manitoba and in downtown Winnipeg or anywhere in the west, this is true, but we do have the Canadian Wheat Board located there.
It is shocking to me that the government, because of some ideological crusade that it is on, would contemplate wiping out the Canadian Wheat Board, wiping out this great prairie institution without allowing farmers their statutorily protected right to a vote, first of all. I used the term “fascist” earlier and I was chided for doing so, so I will not do so again.
Is that not like a fascist state, to deny somebody their statutorily protected right to vote? Then when the government did grudgingly allow the barley growers and producers the right to vote, it gerrymandered the voters list, so it did not let everybody vote.
