If the farmers got as much money for their product as the restaurants get for theirs, they wouldn't be sitting here today. And I can't afford it; I know how you guys eat.
I want to welcome all of you to my riding. Thanks for coming out.
I'll take Wayne up on his offer one of these days to go to P.E.I., because when I was in farming, potatoes were our major cash crop, so I know a little bit about that one. But I also know that during those years, the last thing we had to worry about was interference from government.
I hear the question a lot of times, “What can the government do for you?” When they used to ask us that question, when I was young and my Dad was there, he'd say, “Get in your car and go home. Go away. Leave us alone. Let us do our job, our business.” And I think there might be some merit to that.
That's why, although my farming experience in ranching, with cattle and grain growing—we had all of that—was in the States, I saw so much commonality when I came here, in the sense that I found it difficult to understand why a person had to go through certain loopholes in order to sell his own product. I couldn't believe it. That didn't sound right. I never had to do that. I used to load up a truckload of barley—it was malt—and I would go into the brewery and they'd test it. If it was good, they would buy it at a good price, and if they wouldn't, then we would go to the feed mill and grind it up with some oats and some sorghum and have feed for our cattle in the fattening pens. It was all so simple.
It seems now what we have as the biggest problem that I can see is the complication of all of this. The bureaucrats must work overtime to complicate things.
When I went to the meeting with the CAIS people, they were going to illustrate to the ranchers and the farmers in this area how to go about applying for the program. I think there were 39 people in the operation of the CAIS applications across Alberta and Saskatchewan, for sure, and it could have been into Manitoba. There were five of them who came to present to us how you do this.
I have six years of university—I'm not really too stupid—and a lot of it was with business and accounting. I hadn't the vaguest idea of what they were even talking about, how you'd go about applying for help under the CAIS program, and all of us felt that way. But in fact, I don't think they were even too sure about what they were presenting.
I don't know why governments and bureaucracies allow things to work overtime to make things so doggone complicated, to the point where it takes forever if you're ever going to get any help. So we really need something to simplify it. That's my opinion.
We also need to educate the people in the cities a lot better about what this industry is.
I've been in Ottawa 13 years. I don't think I've ever seen agriculture at the very top of priorities, yet it should be very high, if not at the top, because it's so important to this country. And if we can't see that, then we really need to educate people so they can.
It troubles me when a segment of our country, the western farmers, are affected by the Wheat Board, but the people who represent Metropolitan Toronto and those kinds of areas have a big voice in whether we have to go through the Wheat Board or not. I never could understand that. It didn't quite gel with me.
I understand Alex is saying thousands of people support the Wheat Board. You know, I've been in Wild Rose riding for 13 years. I've found three, so far, who do, of the thousands. The rest don't. It's pretty obvious to me that the ones I talk to—and there are tons of them—don't. So I don't understand why the farmers can't have a stronger voice.
But getting down to the brass tacks, I'd like to ask two questions. Robert, maybe you could help me on one of them, or Erik.
Corn dumping has a been a problem, I think, for quite a while. Am I accurate in saying that, and if so, are you aware of any actions on the part of the government to deal with that?
And secondly, to the newcomers into farming, the young farmers, are the young farmers today getting well trained in the marketing of products as well as the other things associated with farming? I'm just curious about that.
A lot of that was my own comments. It's how I feel, my gut feeling that less government is better, more people control is stronger. You can take that for whatever it's worth. That's based on my experience when I was in the business years ago. I'm concerned about the corn dumping and the—