I've spoken both to the canola producers and to the flax producers, and I've spoken to many dairy farmers in southeastern Manitoba. Even farmers who don't know much about the bill say when you explain it to them that it would probably be handy some days to have a Roundup Ready product, but they wouldn't want it because it would probably drive them nuts down the road with the other problems it would create. That's from farmers who haven't put more than a moment's thought into it, other than the moment when they were presented with it.
The most important and biggest thing I have found from everybody I've spoken to is “pass the bill”. That's number one. There's not much fear of the bill, although there's a lot of fear in the discussion out there. There's a very interesting discussion from a political point of view. There's a lot of discussion out there about the fear of what could happen. It's not about the bill.
What producers are really worried about is this point about our losing control of the regulations behind the bill: we want the bill and we want to be part of everything that goes behind it. A perfect example of this is the Canola Council.
The Canola Council has a group that approves all varieties for registration in western Canada. Included in that group are eight import countries. So they say on the one hand that the council should not give its rights and decision-making over to the other countries, but they have given it to eight of their import countries, which are their most important customers, and that is what you should be doing.
You should be going to your customers first and asking, “What is it that you want?”. The customer is always right. I don't care who you are. Eaton's proved that for half a century. The customer is always right. You must look after your customer first and then you deal with the negative issues out of that, going back to your own production systems and marketing systems.
But the customer is always right. You must focus on that and you must give producers the input they need, that they require, to make that a responsive and flexible system. The bill is perfect the way it stands. It's a perfect requirement. Why would you produce anything with no market for it?
The last thing I want in my farm is a bin full of something that there's no market for. What the heck would I want to produce that for? I must first have a market. That's why we have contracts. That's why there's so much movement in the canola industry for identity-preserved, value-added products that are pre-contracted all the way out.
In the foreign seed industry, Kurt does not sign a contract with any producer for seed production until he in fact has that production sold and the country importing that product knows who's going to buy that seed and why they're going to buy that seed. It's not speculative. We know exactly what our needs are in the industry and we produce to those needs.
And those needs change constantly. That's a moving target. Regulation must be there in the hands of the stakeholders to adjust to the moving target that is the marketplace. The bill must be there to force us to do that. But the criterion that we actually respond to has to be flexible. It cannot be part of the bill. The bill is perfect the way it stands. It's simple and we like it.