If I may, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the comments and the questions. You've hit what I would say is probably the fundamental problem with farming. We are tremendous producers of wealth—absolutely, no question. In fairness, we don't get to keep nearly as much as we should, given the amount of work and effort that we put in, as Virginia aptly talked about and some of the farmers gave as first-hand responses back to their organization.
Again, to me, it's something that farmers, if in an innovative environment that allows farmers to participate in the marketplace in such a way.... That's what we're trying to do with farmers in North America, to be able to have strategic investments and strategic positions in the marketplace to allow competition to work freely.
It is very, very difficult, particularly when you don't have a Competition Bureau that you can get to work with you. That is the most frustrating part. It seems that there isn't a merger that they don't like.
I can understand they want our organizations and companies to be globally competitive, but when you allow them to be globally competitive you're doing it at the expense of the SMEs. The small and medium enterprises have to pay more for their inputs and the business they're doing with those companies, even if those companies are more globally competitive. To me that's a direct policy decision, to allow that to happen at the expense of one and to the benefit of the other. It's really a question of what is it that you want to have. That's a question that has to be asked with regard to the Competition Bureau.
There are very strategic ways on the input side, and it's hardly at all about what our organization does. It's not just about volume buying. For example, on the innovative side, we have companies that are banding farmers together, not only on strategic investment but on certain research, such as LCO technologies that help the transfer of nutrients from fertilizer in the soils back into the plant. It's farmers being involved in that primary research and owning that research, or at least having the ability to ensure that in the marketplace those that are involved in that part of the business have to compete with an entity that does that.
We're looking at the same thing in the grain-handling sector. We may make this legislation look really good if we can provide competition in that whole marketplace of the grain-handling sector.
There isn't an analyst out there—whether you look at Credit Suisse or BMO Capital Markets—that isn't positive, that isn't saying the pipeline revenue for these companies will increase. Every dollar of pipeline revenue per tonne is an extra $50 million bill for farmers. Our job is to ensure that doesn't happen, that our companies become efficient and competitive, and that those costs are a cost of providing those services plus a reasonable profit and not otherwise.
But it does take organization. Farmers really don't have cooperatives anymore in the grain-handling sector and a lot of other sectors. We just have to pull them together, and I think that's part of the solution, or it is for the most part a commercial solution.