The witness list we were given indicated that Mr. Chatenay was one of the witnesses who would be here. He was put on the list and we requested that he be here.
On Tuesday, the steering committee did something they have never done in the six years I have been here. They met behind closed doors. We're not privy to what went on there, but when they came out of that meeting they had altered the witness list. They closed the witness list to deny somebody who was scheduled and had been requested to appear here at the committee. This was done, as far as I know, without their talking to any of the regular members of the committee. The proceedings were secret.
I think questions need to be asked and answered about what went on behind closed doors. More importantly, we need to understand why this was done.
I think I can explain. It's important that opposition members understand that western Canadian farmers have wanted choice for decades. This issue has really been brought to a head in recent years. Let me give the opposition members a little bit of the history.
In the early 1990s, a fall frost froze much of the grain in western Canada. We were told by the Canadian Wheat Board at the time that it would be very difficult or impossible to move that grain. So farmers started looking around for their own markets. They decided to take samples across the border to see if they could get their grain into the United States. They found out that the grain was graded differently in the United States. They got a price on the grain and were going to move to take it to the States.
To do that they had to call the Canadian Wheat Board and get permission from them to sell the grain. We gave them the sales information. A few days later we got a call from the companies in the United States and they said, “We're not going to deal with you as individual farmers. We have a sale for this wheat. We have as much of this wheat as we want.”