Agriculture Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2006

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

But we can certainly do that at this point.

You gentlemen took notes. I know Mr. Migie was scrawling in shorthand.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

My faith has run out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Mr. Steckle's faith has run out. That's a tragedy, Paul; I'm sorry to see that. Hang on, though, the future looks bright.

Gentlemen, you have a bit of homework to do. If you could get it back to the clerk as quickly as possible, we'll make sure Mr. Easter gets a copy of all of that.

Thank you so much for your work here today. I'm certain that it will be ongoing.

This portion of the meeting will suspend, and we'll wait for our witness changeover.

Mr. Atamanenko.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Would it be possible for all of the committee to get the same information?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Yes, it will come to the clerk.

We'll do the translation, gentlemen. Don't worry about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Let's call this meeting back to order.

In the second session here we have Bob Friesen from the Canadian Federation of Agriculture—Bob, thank you for coming--Rob Lobdell, president of West Central Road and Rail, and Mr. Avery Sahl, here as an individual.

Thank you for joining us here this afternoon, gentlemen.

I have to tell you that when I was coming in, I saw Bob Friesen going through the metal detector. He had his jacket off, and I thought, my God, we're strip-searching farmers again.

Thanks for getting through there, Bob. It's great to see you here.

Each of you gentlemen has a presentation. According to my list, we'll start with Bob.

[Bob Friesen, President, Canadian Federation of Agriculture]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It is a pleasure for me to be here.

You do have a very short brief of the presentation I'm going to be making. I won't read that brief. I will relegate my comments to just simply verbal comments.

I would like to start out by applauding the minister and the government for taking a partial step in the right direction by announcing a plebiscite on barley. I would encourage the government and the minister to continue along that road of leadership and include wheat in the plebiscite as well. That's basically what I want to talk about today.

I'm not going to talk about the pros and cons of the Canadian Wheat Board. I'm going to talk about the importance of a plebiscite. Certainly, two weeks ago, CFA members from across Canada supported the call for a plebiscite because the principle of a plebiscite is very important to them. Also, there's the fact that in Ontario it was the producers who decided to eliminate the Wheat Board for wheat. In Quebec, they just recently decided on single-desk selling for wheat by producers as well, following what they've done in the hog industry, as well as in the maple syrup industry. My understanding is that they have it for rabbits now as well. But certainly CFA members called for a plebiscite.

I also want to talk about the importance of a debate on both sides of the issue, with adequate information to be dispensed. People can then look at this information, discuss the information, and then make a decision.

Why a plebiscite? I have several reasons why CFA members say it's very important to hold a plebiscite. Number one, of course, is that it's written in the act. CFA members feel that if it's written in the act, no other means should be taken or should be used to circumvent what is called for in the act. Let's simply do what the act defines we should do and ask farmers what they think should be done.

Secondly, there's a lot of talk about farmer empowerment and empowering farmers in the marketplace, but farmer empowerment is more than just that. Farmer empowerment, we believe, also entails allowing farmers to decide on what marketing system they want to use and what marketing system is best for the collective interest of agriculture.

Thirdly, many farmers have grown to depend on the Wheat Board as a tool that has empowered them in the marketplace. Given the fact that a decision on the Wheat Board, if it was deregulated, would be irreversible, we feel that's another reason these farmers need to be in on the decision that is made.

Fourthly, arbitrarily deregulating a marketing structure, we believe, sets a very important precedent for any other marketing structures that we have in Canada. I know the marketing structures themselves are very different, but the question is the same. Whether it's a provincial government or a federal government that deregulates a marketing structure, it does set an important precedent. Certainly, if a marketing structure is deregulated, that brings us much closer to either level of government deregulating other marketing structures arbitrarily as well.

Fifthly, it's all about partnership. I believe Minister Strahl said it best in his press release yesterday when he said that a plebiscite is a very important part of consultation, especially when you dispense all the information needed to make an intelligent decision. This is all about partnership, and, again, a plebiscite is an important way to consult with farmers.

But it does depend, then, on whether there's appropriate economic analyses and information out there. My second and last point deals with why we need that information out there.

First of all—and I believe it was Mr. Migie who it said earlier—there is a lot of information out there as to what benefits the Canadian Wheat Board accrues back to the primary production sector. There are all kinds of numbers out there. We believe it's important that farmers see all these economic analyses that show how much is accrued back to the farm gate, so that they can look at the numbers and determine exactly what the value is of the marketing structure they have had in the past and then weigh that value with value-added.

We've also heard a lot about value-added. We've heard people say that the Canadian Wheat Board is impeding value-added. CFA members would tell you that when you compare us with the U.S., the bigger impediment to value-added in Canada is our lack of competitive policy with the U.S., which we're currently working on, as you know. But certainly it has more to do with the lack of competitive policy than with any marketing structure we have in place.

But I believe it's very important to put that information out there as well. Last week when we had the three agricultural ministers here from western Canada, there was quite a discussion on value-added. Some of them had numbers to say that value-added has increased more in Canada than it has in, say, the states just across the border. But whatever information is right or wrong, that information needs to be put out there as well so that farmers can have a look at it. We then need to weigh the economic benefits of the value-added of whatever the Wheat Board accrues back to the primary production sector and have farmers have a look at it to again make sure they can make an intelligent decision.

The other point is that there has been a lot of talk that the Canadian Wheat Board could survive in a dual marketing system. This is where I'm going to be certainly not critical of the minister, but critical of the task force report. I believe the task force report had very little to do with the Canadian Wheat Board under a dual marketing system; it had more to do with how to start a new grain company. On that, I believe they were very long on rhetoric and very short on economic analysis.

This is about starting a new grain company. If I may be frank, Mr. Chair, it barely passes the laugh test. The fact is that we have just recently looked at what used to be three very rich wheat pools in western Canada. Because of a lack of competitive policy, they have either gone public or they have gone to partial foreign ownership. Basically, in terms of the control of these wheat pools by farmers, that control has been taken out of their hands.

To be able to say we could start a new grain company just like that to compete against other multinationals or even the large grain companies that we have in Canada, and the suggestion that $100 million should do it.... When you look at something like Agricore United, which has over $1 billion in capital assets, or something like the Wheat Pool, which has up to something like $300 million in capital assets, I believe there needs to be a heck of a lot more analysis and a much tougher look taken at the idea of starting a new grain company and saying it can be successful. That's true especially when you think that these farmers who are broke are supposed to start this new grain company.

To conclude my comments, Mr. Chair, those are the two points I want to make. Yes, there are arguments on both sides of the issue. Let's put all the adequate information and economic analyses out there that we can possibly get, have farmers look at the information, and then have farmers make the decision. We know there are good arguments on both sides, but the importance here is the information out there. Dispense the information and let farmers decide on a marketing structure, so that farmers across Canada who are involved in other marketing structures don't have the fear that they might wake up some morning and have their marketing structures deregulated as well.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Thank you, Mr. Friesen.

Mr. Lobdell.

[Rob Lobdell, President, West Central Road & Rail]

Thank you very much.

I had a couple of photos that I was hoping to have distributed amongst the members, if that's possible.

To begin with, I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak to your committee today. Today I want to talk to you about producer cars, West Central Road & Rail, and the Canadian Wheat Board.

What are producer cars, and how did they come to be? A producer car is a railcar loaded with a producer's grain. It enables a producer to bypass the primary elevator system and ship the grain directly to destination, typically a port terminal.

How and why did the producers get the legislated right to load producer cars? Over a century ago, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, producers were becoming increasingly discontented with the market power abuses of the grain companies and railways that were working together to dictate when, where, and how producers would deliver their grain. At that time, producers were able to influence the government of the day to draft legislation to address the market power and balance that existed. This led to the creation of the Canada Grain Act, which included provision for the right to load producer cars.

Producer cars were intended to serve as a competitive safety valve for producers. However, even with producers having the legislated right to load producer cars, grain companies and railways quickly found ways to stifle the practical application of that right.

Fast forward to the mid-1990s. As much as things had changed from the previous century, they remained the same. Once again, the railways and grain companies began working together to design a grain handling and transportation system that suited their best interests, at the expense of producers. This exercise by the railways and grain companies became known as rationalization and consolidation, which in the vernacular meant branch lines would be ripped up and elevators torn down. Enter West Central Road & Rail, a progressive group of producers in communities who in 1997 formed with the objective of retaining rail service to the region.

Initially, we watched helplessly as rail service dried up and elevators were razed to the ground. Finally, we decided enough was enough, so we went to the railway and told them that since they didn't want to service the line, West Central Road & Rail would buy it and operate it ourselves. The railway told us flatly to get lost—and I have the vernacular for that as well, but I won't share that with you. Why? Because according to them, they had already made agreements with the grain companies to abandon our line so that our area could serve as a catchment for high through-put elevators built on the line north of us.

Angered and dejected, we approached the Canadian Wheat Board for help. The Canadian Wheat Board informed us that they would need railcar orders before they could press the railway for service. That was when the idea struck us. We decided we were going to blow the dust off a century-old piece of legislation that gave us the right to load producer cars. Not only were we going to load producer cars, we were going to load a producer car train: one hundred producer cars in one day. In two weeks, we had one hundred producer car applications in hand.

Armed with railcar orders, we now had the leverage to enable the Canadian Wheat Board to press for rail service. But even with that leverage, it still took nearly three months of haggling and a formal complaint to the Canadian Transportation Agency before the railway begrudgingly provided rail service. It was that single event that launched West Central Road & Rail, an event that would never have taken place without the Canadian Wheat Board.

I have provided you with photos. You'll get to see how that event unfolded in the dead of winter, and why it was important.

What began as a one-time exercise to send a message to the railways and grain companies that we were not prepared to stand idly by while they demarketed our rail line into de facto abandonment became the catalyst that led to producer cars becoming a real, competitive alternative to the traditional grain handling system. West Central Road & Rail began offering producer car loading on an ongoing basis along our rail network, which generated orders and in turn gave the Canadian Wheat Board leverage to push for rail service.

Next, West Central Road & Rail went beyond our network and offered our producer car program across Saskatchewan. The success did not go unnoticed, and eventually several other entities imitated our model, and producer car numbers continued to rise. Never content with the status quo, West Central Road & Rail continued to grow and evolve. In 2001, West Central Road & Rail implemented a truly unique and innovative grain gathering system for the new millennium, based on producer cars. This included the construction of producer car loading facilities designed to support this new process.

One of my favourite pictures here is of one of the facilities. These facilities are capable of loading and unloading grain at a rate of 500 metric tonnes per hour. That means this facility can load 25 car blocks in less than six hours, while at the same time providing identity preservation to a high degree of segregation and quality control.

West Central Road & Rail's producer car system has moved producer cars beyond the competitive safety valve to a generator of intense competition. I will explain by citing a specific example. Trucking incentives across Saskatchewan average approximately $4.50 per metric tonne. In the West Central Road & Rail region, we are continually targeted with trucking incentives ranging from $10 to $14 per metric tonne. Why? Because West Central Road & Rail exists. And that's where the Canadian Wheat Board comes in.

Without the Canadian Wheat Board, it is unlikely that West Central Road & Rail would have ever come into existence. Think about the forces that were marshalled against us. Matched against the railways and major grain companies, what chance would you have given us to succeed? If your answer exceed 0%, I can tell you matter of factly that you answered incorrectly.

The Canadian Wheat Board brings balance to what would otherwise be an imbalanced system. The Canadian Wheat Board's ability to exert influence on the grain handling and transportation system is a direct benefit of the Canadian Wheat Board's single-desk marketing. It is a benefit that is often overlooked and undervalued. As an example, who in the grain industry has ever formally challenged the railways head-on? The grain companies? No. They're too afraid, rightly or wrongly, of railway reprisals. Only the Canadian Wheat Board, at least successfully, has been willing to challenge the railways head on. Ultimately, the Canadian Wheat Board allows for fair access to the grain handling and transportation system, and that fosters a healthy and competitive environment.

Going back to producer cars by way of example, in the absence of the Canadian Wheat Board, what real opportunity would an individual producer have to load a producer car? First, he or she would have to find a buyer for the grain, someone willing to accept it on the basis that it would be shipped as a producer car. That in itself would be no easy task. What incentive would a vertically integrated grain company with a prairie delivery point only twenty miles from the producer's loading site have in accepting that grain? I would suggest very little.

Let's assume, though, that the producer is an incredibly skilled marketer and locks up a direct sale to a mill out east for a single- or even a ten-car block of grain. As a condition of sale, it is immediate shipment upon three weeks, pre-advice. If such a condition is not met, discounts will apply.

What influence do you think a single producer will have in exerting influence with the railway to get his car spotted and lifted in a timely manner in order to stay within the shipping terms of his or her contract? The answer is none. And even if the producer has a legitimate complaint against the railway, it is unlikely that he or she will have the finances or resources to act upon it. In the absence of the Canadian Wheat Board, a producer could very easily be priced out of or serviced out of the practical ability to load a producer car.

You can have a neon sign flashing in every community and farmyard across the prairies, displaying the message that producers have the legislated right to load producer cars, but what good is it? Legislated or not, if you cannot practically utilize a right, then the right is of no value. That will become a very real scenario in the absence of the Canadian Wheat Board. Additionally, it is not only producer cars that will be in jeopardy if the Canadian Wheat Board is dismantled. It will also adversely affect independent and producer-owned terminals, whether inland or at port, and short-line railways.

In closing, I would like you to look at the last picture I have provided for you. You will notice that there is a very thin line that separates those two realities. The outcome of what happens to the Canadian Wheat Board will determine which side of that line we, as producers, will follow.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Mr. Lobdell.

Mr. Sahl, please.

[Avery Sahl, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, gentlemen.

I had a report that I sent in about six days after I received my notice to appear before the committee. Obviously it didn't get printed in the two languages, so I'm going to do it verbally.

You might think by the look of me that I'm a little bit long in the tooth to get involved in this discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Yes, we have it in both official languages, Mr. Sahl. It was done and it has been distributed.

[Avery Sahl]

Oh, I'm sorry. I was led to believe it wouldn't be on time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Oh, no. We have a great clerk.

[Avery Sahl]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Unfortunately.

We'll open the round to questions, and you'll be able to answer those as well.

Thank you.

Mr. Easter, for seven minutes, please.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

Thank you, folks.

Really, in one way or another, all of you mentioned the Canadian Wheat Board. Rob, maybe you said it best when you said the Canadian Wheat Board actually balances the system in terms of the powerful players out there, as opposed to the tens of thousands of grain producers up against the international grain trade and the railways.

Avery, you were vice-president of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool at one time, and when you were vice-president, the pools really worked in the farmers' interest. I spent years out there in western Canada, and I absolutely found it amazing how powerful those pools were. Now they really operate in the interests of their shareholders, who may be in New York or Toronto or elsewhere around the world. So at one time, where you did have allies in terms of your own pools that were working in your interest, to a great extent now they're just grain companies. They're out to make a buck for their shareholders, which I think comes to the point of the Wheat Board and this task force report that we heard some more about today: no evidence, no documentation.

Do you really think the answer is as the task force recommends, that what Canadian prairie farmers really need is another grain company?

[Avery Sahl]

It's so bizarre—I can hardly believe it. Who's driving this train? It's a group of wheat growers. They have no credibility whatsoever. I want to go through that. They wanted to get rid of the statutory rate, which was good for farmers. They wanted inland terminals. My son hauls, round trip, over 100 miles to an elevator. They said we were growing Cadillac wheat and we should be growing some of this other stuff. Well, that's crazy.

I went to a lot of meetings in the United States, with the wheat growers and the durum growers. They were there in full force at every meeting. They were badmouthing the Canadian Wheat Board and what it was doing. Durum growers were doing the same thing. I can tolerate that in our own country, but you shouldn't go out to your competitors' bailiwick and badmouth your own country. Even their president made a trip to Washington, for God's sake. It was the same type of thing. It's no darned wonder that the Russians rejected a cargo of U.S. wheat—for stone, gravel, you name it.

My point is that this train seems to be driven by a small group of people financed, believe it or not, by the province of Alberta, which put $1 million into the thing. They've already got a dual market. They have a big feeding industry that they can't supply themselves. A lot of grain has to come in from Saskatchewan to service that big feed market. Saskatchewan grows as much as the other two combined.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Rob gave us a picture of the fine line between success and disaster. There is a lot of propaganda coming from the promoters. They're trying to indicate that they're not really about destroying the Wheat Board, and that this decision the government is promoting will not have an impact on producer cars or the transportation system. They're leaving that impression.

Rob, I think you differ with that opinion. Can you explain concretely how you feel this decision will impact producer cars and the ability of farmers to have a say from a power point of view?

[Rob Lobdell]

I've had first-hand experience in dealing with the railways. We have a large volume—3,500 cars a year. Even with that kind of volume, we sometimes have a difficult time with the ins and outs of dealing with the railways. You have to remember this. Oftentimes they try to say that producer cars have nothing to do with the Canadian Wheat Board, that they have to do with the Canadian Grain Commission. That is untrue. I will tell you why. Don't forget, somewhere, somehow you have to have an actual car allocated to you. The Canadian Wheat Board controls the pool of cars. Without the Canadian Wheat Board, it's highly unlikely that we would be able to access cars as we do now.

I want to make a comment. I had a chance to read the report as in-flight reading. I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I'm a person driven by practical experience and pragmatism—not philosophy or ideology. I come from an area that is a bastion of right-wing thinking, rather than left-wing thinking. Just for the record, that's Mr. Anderson's backyard.

I was waiting to see how we were going to have a viable Wheat Board, and we're not. The truth of the matter is that they're going to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board and essentially create another grain company, the Canadian wheat pool, if you will. As we know it today, it is not the Canadian Wheat Board with the influence that it has in the grain transportation and handling system. It simply is not.

[Bob Friesen]

Thank you. I want to make a couple of points. First of all, there's not nearly enough information that CWB II would be able to survive. Let's ask all the grains and oilseeds producers who lost equity in SaskPool over the last two years, or in the Alberta Wheat Pool. None of them are going to believe for a minute that we could start a new grain company to compete against these other large companies. This is an information issue.

The other information issue is that farmers need to know this isn't a case where we'll try it for a couple of years and if it doesn't work we'll go back to a single-desk monopoly. It's going to be irreversible. You just need to look at chapter 11, the investment chapter in NAFTA, at the performance requirements. We need an analysis on what the loss of market power would do. Would it harm farmers or wouldn't it? I'd like to see information like that as well.

We also need to see better information on value-added. Most people don't know Canada is a larger net exporter of flour than the United States. Do farmers know that when they hear the argument that we're impeding value-added, or that companies are saying they'd like to set up a malting plant in western Canada, but they can't because of the Canadian Wheat Board? In fact, we can import malt barley from the U.S. with no tier 2, with no tariffs. That's not an impediment either. We need much better information out there, so we can have a really good objective discussion from both sides of the issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Thank you, Mr. Friesen.

Before we move on, Rob, you made the point that you run 3,500 cars a year down your line. Can you give us a breakdown of the percentage of board and non-board grains?

[Rob Lobdell]

We've got no board grains, really.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

No non-board grains.