Mr. Speaker, first I would like to mention on the subject of farmer consultation that I encourage the government to become more involved in it. What we will see happening is that farmers, the stakeholders who can take part in the decision, will get behind whoever is in power at the particular time if they have the opportunity to become real players in the discussion.
If the hon. member wants to talk about GRIP, if we look only at the numbers we see that Saskatchewan makes up half or more of the participants. That in itself says something to me. If we talk to farmers in western Canada, and I speak mainly about Saskatchewan because that is my area and that is where I do my work, they tell us for the reasons I said that it does not work. There is no farmer consultation. It is too heavily bureaucratic. It takes up to 18 months to get final payments.
It is simply not the answer given the problems we see today. It is too expensive for federal and provincial governments and the producers. The negatives far outweigh the benefits of the program. It simply was never a good program to start with. It only took us two years in Saskatchewan to realize that. It just has to go. There is no question about it.