Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank all the witnesses for taking the time to come forward today to talk to us about the very important issue of competitiveness in our agriculture industry.
I want to start out with a comment to Mr. Robertson. You talked about some very important matters in relation to regulatory environments. I think you're dead on when you talk about the OUI program and helping to make the GROU program a better program than it is by making it faster, more efficient, and more competitive. There is no doubt that there's been a price disparity in the past, but OUI did help our farmers level out that price disparity in certain segments.
I do take a little umbrage to your point on bilaterals. I think it's very important in today's market to go after bilateral trade as aggressively as the minister is. You talk about the United States. I think that becomes part of our problem sometimes, in that we focus on the United States. In terms of the South Korean market, as far as I understand it, the biggest country to take up the void that was left is Australia, which has a population of 21 million, compared to our 32 million. There's no doubt we can compete with these guys if we can get in there and make good bilateral agreements. I agree with you there.
The other issue I would like to talk about today is the shippers' bill of rights. Mr. Easter talks about cost review versus level of service review, but what he happens to leave out is that our government did something in the last Parliament that our producers and our shippers had been requesting for an awfully long time. As many of you know, I worked with you on a 24-page report that I submitted to the minister on the shippers' bill of rights. It set out what we needed there and how we had to fight for the right thing. In that bill of rights came this level of service review, which came directly from our producers and our shippers. It said the first thing we have to do is to get this level of service review.
I thank you for your encouraging comments on that. Let's make sure we get this done and get it done properly, and then move on to the next step, but let's do it one step at a time.
What I primarily want to talk to you about today is competitiveness within our industries. I'm from western Canada, and my producers don't have the ability to compete in an open, competitive industry because the opposition parties have kept their hands on the backs of our farmers for the last three years in not allowing us to move forward with progress on the Canadian Wheat Board.
The Canadian Wheat Board often talks about how it provides pricing advantages right from the ground up for our farmers, yet we have a $60 million freight overcharge, $30 million of which comes from Wheat Board crops. I don't see the board going out there, fighting for our farmers, and getting the best price advantage when it comes to these things.
I'd like to ask Mr. Strankman, who I know comes from an area close to me, if he feels the Wheat Board does a good job in getting price advantage throughout the value chain for our farmers.