Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses from the department for being here to answer questions as we look forward. In actually assessing the witnesses—and here we're at the end of the deliberations with witnesses—you kind of put it all together.
There were some challenges from Mr. Allen that the survey done wasn't so trumped up and that having dead people is an anomaly that happens from time to time with surveys. Perhaps that's true.
I've been farming all my life. My son has taken over the family farm. I don't know how many years it has been. It's been a half-century or more. We never got a ballot in that trumped-up survey. We saw those anomalies happening right on the table. So you can't just see the survey as a justification or a valid survey.
We've heard other things, such as whether dual marketing is a legitimate language. We understand that this comes right from the Wheat Board's own survey.
We've heard from the Wheat Board, and I think it all boils down to this: The existing Wheat Board is saying that once you open it up to dual marketing as an option for farmers to sell their own wheat and barley, it will cost western farmers. We've had other surveys and testimony here saying that there will be tremendous savings and opportunities for farmers. The minister was just here saying how much opportunity there is for new mills--pasta mills, noodle mills, and flour mills--and the number of jobs that are going to be created.
You know, I'm a farmer. I want to look at it as a farmer as much as I look at it as a politician. As I assess it, when you allow the option, those who want the Wheat Board and believe that they can get the best value from it will exercise that option. Why wouldn't they? I've never seen a farmer sell, when given two options, to the lower bidder. They'll sell to whomever they find is the best option. Those who can find a better option will exercise that option. We're really arguing about whether it's good or bad for western farmers. The reality is that farmers will decide. What I like about this piece of legislation is that it allows for that. It allows those farmers to have a comfort zone and an existing Wheat Board—a pooled option. It will allow those farmers who want to exercise another option to have that opportunity as well.
It will ultimately be the farmers who will decide. This is very exciting to me.
There are some questions on the technical side, and we've talked about how important it is to have the rail freight service review looked after and to have service agreements for those shippers. We're seeing some of the large corporations that move grains, such as Viterra and Cargill, and so on, working aggressively to get those rail agreements in place, preparing for this.
I do have a technical question for the department with regard to the railways. What is important for the small farmers out there who may be watching on television and assessing how this is all going to work is whether it is going to be a clumsy system for moving their grain on producer cars. Are they going to have template agreements that will be able to smooth that system and the transition?
These are the kinds of things they're asking about. I'm wondering if the department has actually done some work with regard to that. I know that the minister referred to some of the work he's done with railways on the transportation of products across western Canada. I wonder if either of you have any comments with regard to that.