In terms of my understanding of the data, as I see it, Mr. Otto went down and compared prices. He did it on a number of occasions. And on each of those occasions, it showed that the Canadian producers were not getting an amount equivalent to that of the Americans. So I would consider that, over time, to be empirical data as well. I think it's important data.
When you say that you can't compare spot prices to PROs, well, you can over a year, because the PRO over the year ends up being what the farmers get. You can take a look at what the spot prices were through that whole year, and then you'll have an idea of what people in a more open market had. When people tell me that the spot price for 11 months in a row was above the PRO, that tells me that somebody is marketing the product at a discount. I think that's about as empirical as you can get, and Mr. Easter knows that. He's well aware of that.
Anyway, farmers are smart enough. When they elected us last year they knew full well what our policy was, and that policy was that we wanted to give them some marketing choice in barley and wheat and grain transportation issues, as well as grain marketing issues. We've been moving ahead on that. We've been clear about what we're doing.
Actually, we've done a number of things since last year. I think it's probably important that the committee be reminded of them, because those are the kinds of things that apparently some of the opposition think are important to spend some time studying.
Last year on July 27 we had a round table in Saskatoon. We invited a number of organizations. We had representatives from, I think, 30 organizations. Representatives from the provinces were invited. One of the Wheat Board directors was there as well. So we had a round table to discuss marketing choice and how it could work in the future. It was actually a very good meeting. We sat down and got a number of good suggestions about how we should go ahead implementing marketing choice.