Thank you.
By moving this amendment, it really speaks to the whole fundamental question of the Wheat Board, and I believe its greatest strengths and perhaps the biggest change associated with and caused by Bill C-18.
This clause, as it reads currently, essentially makes it a voluntary board. It's the right to choose whether to sell your grain through the Wheat Board or not. I would argue it's that the universality of the Wheat Board's single-desk selling that is its greatest strength.
The amendment that I put forward would in fact maintain the status quo, and the language would simply read, “The object of the Corporation is to market grain for the benefit of producers”. Period, full stop, and delete this language: “who choose to deal with the Corporation”.
I can speak to this briefly, not even using my own words. I implore committee members, and producers who may be watching this, to listen to the words of the American competitors on this subject.
Alberto Weisser, the chief executive officer of Bunge, said the single-desk “concept is brilliant”. Robert Carlson, the president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, said he is “convinced the Wheat Board earned Canadian farmers big premiums compared to the U.S. prices and that the end of the monopoly will further weaken farmers and give more control to the giant multinationals”. He said, “It's been consistently true” that the Canadian Wheat Board has earned more money for Canadian farmers.
It's because of the single-desk monopoly and the collective action of farmers that they've been able to command the hundreds of millions of dollars in premiums over the years for producers. It's really perhaps the shortest clause in the act, but it's the most damaging in terms of the demise of the Wheat Board.
So, therefore, that explains our motivation in deleting the language “who choose to deal with the Corporation”: maintaining the status quo that producers will in fact market their grain and that the object of the corporation is to market grain for their benefit, just as their mandate now is to return the maximum profitability to the producer.