Yes, one point of clarification I would just state for context, Mr. Chair, is that the government didn't own the Wheat Board and so didn't sell any assets. I'd also underscore that prior to commercialization the Canadian Wheat Board per se didn't have that much in the way of unencumbered assets. Its primary source of capitalization was debt and that debt in some cases was guaranteed by the Government of Canada and in some cases not.
For example, the building was encumbered to slightly more than $1 million or $2 million than its worth. The hopper cars likewise had debts secured against them; even though they were donated by the Government of Canada they used these as equity to build the corporation. So the monies you're referring to that were part of the transition fund were to enable the CWB to right-size itself from an organization in excess of about 400 employees to a much smaller organization while dealing with obligations that would have been well beyond its capacity to pay.
So, for example, the monies that we gave the Wheat Board helped pay out pension obligations for those in excess of 400 employees, obligations that the new smaller CWB would not have been able to pay for. We also helped the CWB deal with contracts of affreightment. Those were long-term contracts that they had entered into to transport grain that they could no longer guarantee in terms of volumes and there were certain penalties that had to be negotiated for those.
It was those kinds of costs largely derived from the decision of the government to remove the single desk coupled with the decision to ensure that the CWB remained a viable option for farmers in a post single desk world. So those policy objectives were supported by those transition monies.