We have studied the question of voluntary agencies very seriously. They existed in the 1990s in the apple and potato sectors, among other plant productions. They were failures. Ultimately, they had to be abandoned.
Here are the reasons that I gave: there was no critical mass, and supply was divided. As a result, the competitors did everything they could to make these voluntary agencies disappear. That’s what happened.
There are other examples of this in Canada. For example, the Ontario pork industry uses a mixed system. Producers can sell directly to slaughterhouses, but they have to submit their information to the board. There too, the results are mixed, because the information is never as accurate as it would be if the board was the selling agency.
We also examined the situation in England, in the United Kingdom. We found that there was a selling agency in the milk industry that was dismantled in the 1990s, and resulted in the price of dairy products plummeting for the producers, while the consumer price either stayed the same or increased. We have statistics on this.
This is the kind of impact that we expect here. The same thing will probably end up happening to the Canadian Wheat Board, it won’t be able to survive voluntary markets. The farmers could be the biggest losers in all of this.
I will let Mr. Bilodeau complete my argument.