I will take on the last one first. I'll just make a comment and I know the others will have something to say about that.
We need to have rules and regulations around any program. We're dealing with public money, and you just can't throw public money around without making sure that it's followed, or else the government gets in trouble in a hurry. So we don't want to do that. However, the forms get to be so prohibitive.
I'll give you an example. When I was the minister they'd come in and I'd ask them for a copy of all the application forms. They came in with stacks of them. I asked them what each application was for, and if I didn't like the answer, I threw it in the garbage. I finally ended up with a stack that you could deal with. I said, why can't you put this on one sheet rather than five sheets? It got to be that you never knew if you got the right form. I think it could be simplified.
To answer your question on large companies, I don't know the answer to that one; that's a difficult one. In a democracy, as Mark Twain said, it's like a raft; it never sinks, but your feet are always wet. I think our feet are always going to be wet on that one.
The comment I'd like to make on the caps issue is one I wasn't able to finish because I ran over my timeframe when I made the comment. But we have all kinds of caps on things. Cultivated acres are handled differently depending on how many or how few farmers farm those acres. The degree of land ownership or whether you lease shouldn't be a consideration. Governments have all encouraged farmers to get bigger and bigger. They get economies of scale, and then once you get bigger then they put a cap on you, so you're being unfairly treated. Caps give a disproportionate amount of money to small producers and penalize large ones.
I'm going to make one comment about this that I'd like you to think about. I don't mind being a bit controversial and so I'll put it this way then. Caps have actually hurt western farmers more than eastern farmers. The reason they've hurt western farmers more is that there are bigger farms out here. When you put a cap on things it actually affects us more than the ones in the east, and that's truly unfair. When you look at the system of caps, everything always has to be done fairly, and I don't believe that's fair.
On the GROU program, there is a presentation and I think you all should read it. It's presented to you by the grain growers of North America. I don't disagree with anything it says in there.
However, the one part that you alluded to was the small chemical dealers. If we're to make an even playing field, then allow the local chemical dealer to have the same import rights as the producer. They have to prove things to do that, but that would put that chemical in our local communities right across this country. We get barrels of chemical coming out of the States. It comes through somebody else and our local dealer never sees it. I don't think that's fair. I think that dollar is being made by somebody out there, and why shouldn't it be made in our local communities?
I have a fellow who advised me on this before I came to make sure I was right. He said that by enabling those local dealers in rural Canada to supply these products at comparable prices to the U.S. counterparts and by allowing them to make an import application the same as a farmer does would level the playing field.
I hope that answers your question.