Why oppose this? Various countries have different situations. The U.S. is a big producer of corn, and a lot of the organizations and associations use ethanol as a way to dispose of some of that corn. That's how it was first thought of. Canada, east of the Manitoba–Saskatchewan border, is a net importer of corn—about 50 million to 100 million bushels of corn a year. So it makes no sense that we would import corn from the U.S. and turn it into ethanol. There's going to be a feed deficiency somewhere if we do this.
There are implications for the whole western Canadian grain marketing system if we start pulling grain out of the system. Our terminals on both coasts will be less efficient if there's less grain going east and west. Overall, you're not going to make ethanol or biofuels out of expensive grain. You need cheap grain. This has been government policy for the last 20 years: cheap grain for secondary processing. We've seen that with the elimination of the Crow rate, for example. We've seen that with changes to Wheat Board marketing.
So really, the so-called value-added is actually removing grain from farmers' control. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Husky has a mandate for 130 million litres. The taxpayers are going to pay for it. You fill up your blended fuel. Husky has the mandate for the 130 million. If you're at Texaco and he's a co-op, you have to come to me for the supply, and I can set the price. So there are a lot of costs that are going to go on. Why would we do this? You cannot gain energy from biofuels. It's been proven.
I've heard Don O'Connor. He's an engineer from out in Delta, British Columbia. He's not a scientist. We need scientific analysis and data on this, and the major scientists in this country say it simply doesn't work. It won't work out of grain. It's doubtful it's going to work out of cellulose. Development may change that some day, but currently it doesn't work. We shouldn't be taking the straw and trash off our fields to do things like that.
So biofuels are a costly misadventure. They achieve no public policy objective. Your committee ought to be looking at whether it serves some policy objective. It's not going to drive our cars down the road. It's not going to do anything for the environment. The tailpipe emissions are no better, maybe worse. There are more aldehydes coming out. There are more pollutants coming out of the tailpipe.