Well, every year depends on the market, on how much grain is out there and if you can get it to market and so on. I unequivocally disagree with anybody who says the Wheat Board would have fixed this.
The only rationale I could put to that is that the way they used to dribble out their sales at 12%, or a twelfth a month, certainly didn't put a strain on our system. That might have been the only saving factor. That just means there would have been more grain in your bins and in my bins. When I started farming in the early seventies, we had piles of grain on the ground, and most of it rotted right there. We never did move it because they never did get it going, and it was not the volume that we're looking at today.
The other thing that everybody completely misses is that this is the second year of marketing freedom, not the first. The first year was a complete success. This one was great right off the combine, with 30% more off the combine—that's cashflow—than we ever saw before.
The other point that completely gets missed all the time is that the vast majority of products to be shipped are not Wheat Board commodities. They're canola, and pulses, and non-Wheat Board commodities. Everybody goes on about.... You know, wheat is no longer the king. It's canola. As for some misguided folks who say the Wheat Board would have fixed this, it might have affected 30% of their grain, and as I said, they only marketed a twelfth a month. It's ridiculous to say the Wheat Board would have made a difference—not at all.