Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to answer as many of those questions as I can in the time allotted.
Let's start where Mr. Easter left off, with the Wheat Board-sponsored studies that supposedly are legitimate. I've had a good look at those studies and at the Furtan study, which he referred to. The problem with these studies is that they're cost-benefit analyses that don't list any costs. They don't go back to the farm gate, and they're based on a secret data set that no one's allowed to verify. Other than that, they're great, but I'm not going to bet my life on them.
As for the spot price comparisons on Falcon—and yes, I grow Falcon on my farm—as of last Thursday, the difference between the Wheat Board pool price and what I could receive at an elevator in South Dakota, very close to my farm, was $1.11 a bushel. That is a real world number, not from a study. Yes, you can get a bit better with the fixed-price contracts, but that's going to end at the end of this month. On that particular day, I was leaving 60¢ a bushel on the table.
It really is disingenuous of the minister to try to suggest who I should believe—him or my own lying eyes.
As to the Carter-Lyons study, it was done very rigorously, and again it compares farm gate prices, which is where it actually matters.
The buy-back program is again incredibly disingenuous. Yes, there is a buy-back program, and you get to buy your own grain back, which is an absurdity in itself. My bin in Manitoba bases the price out of Vancouver, which many times is the kind of price Tony Soprano would charge, which is why hardly anybody ever does so.
Concerning the value-added processing, again the honourable minister is mistaken—