As I indicated, you might think I'm a little long in the tooth to be involved in this debate. But after hearing the wheat growers say they want to free up the industry and all those things, I'm going to give you a bit of a history about what happened when I was six years old.
I have farmed for sixty years in southern Saskatchewan, and my dad farmed for a long time before that. For farmers to get money to operate and buy groceries and whatever for the winter, right after the thrasher machine pulled out, they had to deliver grain. We were twenty miles from a small town that had three elevators.
My dad--I remember it very well--loaded up the grain in a tank on a sleigh, and he started out at the crack of dawn to go to that little town to deliver grain. When he got home, I remember he told my mother that all they would give him was the price for number three and that the price was down from the day before.This went on every day.
The farmers in the area decided they would measure that grain into the wagon and send it on the same route. There were a lot of farmers who lived behind us, and they did the same thing. They knew pretty well what they had on that load. When the load was weighed and they said it was not the weight they had when they first weighed it, the elevator said to take the weight or take it home. These were the days of the freedom the farmers had. There was no Canadian Wheat Board. There was no Canadian Grain Commission to judge what kind of grain you had. You took it or you left it. And that's the freedom the wheat growers now are asking for.
I should mention that the farmers even went so far as to buy a flat scale. They dug a hole about two miles from our farm so that when they drove over it in the morning, they would weigh it on this flat scale. They took it to the same town and they said this is the weight they got on a flat scale. They said to take their weight or take it home--twenty miles. You know what the farmers did? They had to take it home; they had no choice. There was no cash advance, no Canadian Grain Commission to even check the scales, and if there was a dispute about the grade, that was too bad.
Anyway, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I said I farmed in southern Saskatchewan for sixty years and that my dad farmed before that. For every position I held, I was elected; I was never appointed. I was elected as a delegate to the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. I moved up in the ranks, and I finally left as first vice-president. So I got to know a lot of ins and outs about the grain companies and how to deal with the Canadian Wheat Board.
At about that time we had grain up to here, and there was a report that there was virtually starvation in China. We had grain we could sell. They asked the former prime minister, the Right Honourable John Diefenbaker, if he could arrange that the board go into China. He did that. McNamara, who was the chief commissioner at that time, and a couple of others, went into China. They were holed up in a hotel in Beijing for two weeks and nobody knew what was happening. Word finally got out that they had made a large wheat sale to China.
Lo and behold, when the word got out, Mr. Alvin Hamilton--I can recall it--took the first route he could get to Hong Kong to meet them. That's why Alvin Hamilton got the name, because he sold the wheat. When Mr. McNamara was asked about that at a SaskPool meeting--and I can recall it because I was there--he said, “I don't give a damn who gets the credit, I sold a lot of Canadian wheat and a lot of Chinese had food to eat.” That's just one little bit of the history.
I happened to go to China—I've been to China and Japan—but I didn't go with the Wheat Board. I went with a group of U.S. cooperative people who asked me to go. We visited Japan, and then we went to China. When we got to Shanghai, I asked the tour conductor if I could see a discharge elevator in a grain mill, a flour mill. Oh, yes, so we drove and finally found it.
We were introduced to the general manager of that Chinese flour mill. We were up on top of that flour mill. I had a cap on with “CWB” on it. Incidentally, they were unloading a cargo of Canadian wheat. They always bought three because of price, but it was better than nothing. That Chinese guy grabbed that wheat, and he looked at me and he said, “Good, good”. I'll just tell you a little secret. I said, “Can I trade you?” This hat that I have here is the hat that guy wore in a Chinese mill in Shanghai, and he's wearing my Canadian Wheat Board hat.
The long of the story is that since then, the Wheat Board has sold more than 1.2 million tonnes of grain to China, and don't you think that hasn't resonated with the Chinese? So I suggest that if anybody goes to China, along with your maple leaf, you better take a Wheat Board logo, because it's pretty well known, not only in China but every place else.
I entertained a lot of Chinese delegations that came through Regina on their way to Winnipeg. They were still wearing the Mao jackets at that time and those kinds of hats, so you know when it was. That relationship has stayed with the Canadian Wheat Board ever since.
One day, my secretary came into my office and she said there were two fellows out there who were really upset about something. I told them to come in so that I could talk to them. They were two Japanese millers. They had a Reuters news release in their hands. It said there were farmers in southern Manitoba importing U.S. wheat and selling it for seed, so they were really upset. They said they buy 1 CWRS 13.5, and that was what they wanted. They did not want U.S. wheat mixed in with the wheat they got from Canada. So that's another experience that you better take.
When people start to talk about changing the grading system, eliminating the CWB, and all these kinds of things, that is the logo of Canada. That CWB is a logo, and you can distinguish it visually. Everybody knows what it is. If we were to drop that, it would be the same as General Motors dropping the Chevrolet logo from their cars. Don't ever forget that.
The wheat growers used to say that we're growing a Cadillac wheat but we should be growing a Chevrolet wheat. Well, I've been around this world long enough to know that there are a lot of Chevrolet wheats out there, but there aren't too many Cadillac wheats. Generally, we're short of that high-grade wheat to fill premium markets. So there's another thing. Don't get confused about some of these things that they're trying to go on about dropping this and dropping our grading system and all that. It's served us pretty damn well, and it's still going to serve us well.
Just as a little idea of my history, I was elected to the advisory committee of the Wheat Board. That area included almost all of southern Saskatchewan. Incidentally, it included Mr. Anderson's current federal riding.
I was at a good many meetings in that area. I've spoken to a good many farmers, and I still talk to many farmers from all political parties, incidentally. When he says the Wheat Board's ideological, well, I'll tell you that it's not ideological, it's monetary. It's dollars and cents. That's what it is.
I served on the standards committee of the Canadian Grain Commission, establishing grades and this type of thing. The U.S. was always very jealous of the Canadian Grain Commission and our quality control, so their producers set up a meeting in Washington. They were going to try to duplicate the commission, so they asked if somebody there who was involved in that could go down and be with them.
When I got to the meeting in Washington, lo and behold, there were more grain company officials there than there were producers. The very first words they said were that they didn't need an organization like that in their business. They said they could conduct their business by buying farmers' grain and selling farmers' grain.
If you don't mind one more point, I was on the marketing panel that was established the last time the wheat growers were trying to move the Wheat Board out of the picture. We sent a letter out to seventy producers and asked them what they liked about the Canadian Wheat Board and what they didn't like. We never got any negative responses back other than one that said they liked it but they thought they paid too much. The others were favourable, big time.
The biggest miller in Indonesia made a special trip over to see us, and he said that if he has to buy grain from anybody other than the Wheat Board in Canada, he's going to the other store, and he meant Australia. That was his final remark, and I remember it very clearly.
I don't know. Maybe I've used up my time, sir.