Thank you very much.
Mr. Minister, no one denies the fact that the Canada Grain Act needed some modernizing and updating. So when this committee prepared its report, it was based on compromises that were quite yielding between the four parties, including your own. The bill that's been proposed bears little resemblance to what we had agreed upon in these chambers, in the spirit of compromise, for agriculture and its producers and the way they are served.
So why would you show us so little respect by so dramatically changing what we hoped would be the new act, after all those hearings and many months of meetings?
The second question is in terms of disaster programs. Your latest set of correspondence shows that it would be the province that would declare the disaster, and then maybe the feds would come in. I'm questioning why you wouldn't just act unilaterally for southwest Saskatchewan and northwestern Ontario, knowing there is such a need, and a continuing one. Why wouldn't you just help federally and perhaps even embarrass those two provinces into coming to the table?