Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, on the long term, a couple of you mentioned supply management. There's no question it's one of the foundations of our agricultural policy, but a trend has been set in the recent issue of the Canadian Wheat Board.
What do you think the threshold should be in terms of any ballots or voting in the industry? Is 13.8% high enough to destroy the system? If 13.8% of producers are opposed and it's on a ballot, which would be about 4.5% of the actual ballots mailed out, is it enough for a government to move to undermine that industry? It's what's happening in the Canadian Wheat Board.
I'd like you to think about that one, because the trend has now been established by the Government of Canada. Only 13.8% are opposed to the Canadian Wheat Board in terms of the latest plebiscite, and it's 29,000 votes out of 80,000 ballots.
Over the longer term, we are caught in a quandary. We have been in the whole farm program in Canada, and it creates a situation where there's really cross-subsidization within the industry. When you have a producer of two commodities, he or she ends up cross-subsidizing the farm operation. How do we get around that? I know producers who set up separate corporations to try to get around it.
Secondly, when you look at the inequitable position we're in with the United States, and it is in the UPA's paper, the farm debt/debt asset ratio is really serious. Even if we get it correct this time, and we sure as heck haven't been correct previously, we're starting off with a $51 billion debt load. Our debts are substantially higher than they are in the United States.
Folks, I was around when interest rates were 23.5%. I can tell you that if interest rates ever moved to 10%, we wouldn't know what hit us. How are we going to get around that problem as well, in terms of a farm safety net package? We have to look at it.