Madam Speaker, I am fully aware that opinion in some parts of western Canada is very sharply divided upon the method of marketing barley.
The short answer to the member's question as to why the system is no longer in place as it was temporarily in place in the latter part of 1993 is simply that the previous government proceeded by a method which the courts ruled to be beyond the government's jurisdiction. The courts ruled that the process undertaken by the previous government was in fact contrary to law.
In terms of whether the system ought to be revisited or reviewed in the future, some in western Canada are proposing the idea of a plebiscite on the issue. The matter of a producer plebiscite can be considered in due course. However, I would caution members against rushing too quickly toward that conclusion. That is because plebiscites sometimes are not quite as simple and clean solutions as one might otherwise think.
In this case, for example, I think there would need to be a legislative framework to ensure that the plebiscite was conducted properly. One would need to have some definition of a trigger mechanism to start the process of a plebiscite. One would have to give careful attention to the wording of the question. As the hon. member knows, whether the question is phrased positively or negatively can have a profound impact on the outcome. Then there are the thorny questions like who gets on the voters list, who is entitled to vote on the issue, and whether it is restricted in some way.
There are a good many complexities relating to the question of a plebiscite. I think all of us would want to think it through very carefully before rushing into that as necessarily the right way to go in these circumstances.