Thank you.
I want to correct a bit of misinformation about the term “single-desk seller” that's being used by some of the questioners. In actuality the Canadian Wheat Board is a single-desk buyer. When it goes into the international market, it has no more power than anybody else; in fact, it's inhibited in that the rest of the world knows what it has for sale, and there are lots of other options out there
The fact that it's a single-desk buyer limits my opportunities as a farmer. If I decide to grow wheat or barley for human consumption, I have one place to sell. If we had presented that option to the auto industry when they were moving into this country, they would never have entered this country. They would not build automobiles if there was only one buyer for their product. That's a plain and simple fact. Why it can't be transposed and why it can't be understood that it's ineffective in agriculture, I don't know.
Your binders--Mr. Ritter, I find your binders very fascinating. The binders that you are presented with have sensitive information. Your competitors that you're being compared to are constrained by the fact that they're dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board; those sales are contingent on selling board grain, so their sales--and I'm assuming these are net, or they're absolutely worthless numbers--have been absolutely constrained. I look at that with a great deal of questioning in my mind, because what I'm hearing from my farmers, from my neighbours, is that their bins are full. To me, that's selective selling.
You can easily keep your numbers up if you don't sell grain--if you sell only into a high-end market. Your mandate, Mr. Ritter and Mr. Measner, is to market those grains. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's your mandate as of today--to market wheat and barley for human consumption. Why are my farmers' bins full of wheat? If you're not in the market and selling, which is what your mandate is, does that not skew the numbers you're talking about in those binders?