Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to read out one of the things Richard Phillips said, “Pulse Canada has a contract to do a bunch of that research to determine the metrics and measure things. I think that sort of work is absolutely key, and the government has funded a project for that.” So it is something that we are looking at.
In terms of the actual market mechanisms that exist and what we're doing right now, farmers are making these calls from their combines. They recognize what is out there and the different companies they can go to. The amendment states “including the delivery of grain to elevators”, so you have to then be able to talk about the different options that exist there, whether you have an on-farm pickup or whether or you're looking at the trucking allowances that many companies will throw on as an incentive to try to bring things in.
When you start to expand the discussion so that this comes into a particular bill, I feel that will make it much too cumbersome. When you look at the options you have, whether you're going to use forward contracting, the street prices I just mentioned, futures contracts, and all these types of things the individual farmer has at his hand, if we are going to give them marketing freedom from that perspective where they can go out and they can make those decisions, then that's what those who were supporting marketing freedom were talking about. They are now saying let's move forward on this.
So I do think, especially with that one line in there, when you're talking about our being able to take this thing from the moment it's swathed to the moment it gets to the port, we are going too far in this, and there should be other options.