Mr. Valeriote, what I'm trying to do is explain why I feel my motion is as important as other motions on the table.
In fact looking at the timeline and the venture that the CWB has gone into, we should have actually brought this forward and had an emergency meeting on it. Hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe we should have pushed this thing a little harder and done that. Maybe we should have a special evening meeting to bring in the members of the Canadian Wheat Board and other industry professionals to talk about this motion.
It is an issue in western Canada that farmers have bought ships they had no say in, and no consultation. Some farmers who are going to retire next year are going to be paying for ships that they'll never get benefit from. They did this in secrecy behind closed doors. Nobody here can agree to that. Nobody can say that's how you run an organization like the Canadian Wheat Board. That's insulting to farmers, as I have said.
We had directors' elections where there were members of the board running for re-election who were aware of the purchase and could have talked about it, but decided not to. The reason they decided not to is they didn't want to take the risk or trust farmers that their decision was a good or bad decision. That's very disappointing. That's just one of the other nails in the coffin of the Canadian Wheat Board concerning the way it goes about conducting its business.
Two years ago, this same organization lost $265 million of farmers' money and derivatives. Where was the emergency debate on that? According to Mr. Easter it was not important, so we weren't allowed to bring that forward.