Madam Speaker, I must say to our colleague from Vegreville that I have always been sold on the system we have whereby we have control of the markets and the production. I have always been sold on that aspect of it.
The member posed the question: Is it good that one section can benefit by this and another section will suffer? I do not believe so.
To go back to the member's first question, I mentioned that when we came in with the gestion de l'offre-I forget the term in English unfortunately, but marketing boards or whatever it is. It is true that when it came to milk production, Quebec was the big winner with 48 per cent of the production in Canada. At that particular time in our development, yes Quebec was the big winner, but I do not think we expected it to be the big winner all of the time and it was not. There were other times when it came to agriculture in Quebec that it was not the big winner. It was probably the west that benefited. However, that was another particular time.
Over a period of 25 to 30 years, if we have in mind to correct the shortcomings, we will all benefit. We cannot feel that at one time we benefited more than at others. It just so happened that the milk production and the way we had structured it was very favourable for Quebec. But it was very favourable for the whole of Canada also in the way that our farmers were guaranteed a price and they could produce a product that was second to none from the point of view of quality and otherwise.
I do not see any problem. We have to look at the long term in agriculture. That goes for our attempts by our new Minister of Agriculture to open up in Asia and elsewhere. It is going to take time. In time we can solve our problems providing we all work together and not one against the other.