Thank you.
Mr. White, it's my first opportunity to meet you. I guess some of the members around the table met you previously, but this is my first opportunity.
I have been around this table for a long time, and have met various CEOs of the Wheat Board over my 15 years in attendance here. I look at your résumé and where you've come from, and you indicate in your résumé that you worked in Canada for a number of years some years ago. So you had some knowledge of the Wheat Board's purpose, the reason for it being there, and how it has served Canadian agriculture, particularly our wheat farmers and barley growers, over the last many years. You came here with some sort of background knowledge about the Wheat Board.
In coming here, obviously, you knew that some issues were going to face you. You came, I suppose, with some degree of trepidation, knowing that you were going to probably face some difficulties in some areas. Now that you have been in your job for six weeks and have heard some of the things mentioned this morning, which obviously were not new to you--you were expecting it, I'm sure--do you feel positive about the future of the Wheat Board? Because in the world, we have become known as the best marketers of the best product. Later this morning we're going to be talking about KVD. If we lose some of that identification and the ability to sell and guarantee that kind of quality, something goes with it, and that's our image.
If we lost the Wheat Board, could grain companies themselves do what the Wheat Board is doing today in terms of handling the large contracts? We have countries buying huge volumes of wheat. There's the financing of that and holding credit lines for those kinds of things. The Wheat Board changed its mandate about ten years ago. We now have farmer involvement. I would have to think that single-desk selling is still the best option. We have it in various other sectors in my province of Ontario--in the hog industry, in the white bean industry. We know it works. I was there when it wasn't done, and it didn't work very well.
How do you see yourself going forward with the challenges we've talked about this morning? And how do you work your way through this maze? What arguments can you come back with to assure us that the Wheat Board, going forward, unless there's government intervention or farmers decide to change course...? How do you see the Wheat Board functioning in the future?