Mr. Speaker, as usual I listened with great interest to the member from Saskatoon-Dundurn. Why? I am not too sure. Perhaps it is the lateness of the hour and I do not have anything better to do this evening so I listened.
I noticed he said the Reform wants to change this on a whim. Nothing could be further from the truth. This motion is well thought out. I do not know whether he has taken the time to read the motion.
The member wants to cling to the past. This is quite unusual because normally that is what the Liberals accuse the Reform Party of doing, but in this case they want to cling to the past. He said he did not know whether the two systems, free marketing and the Canadian Wheat Board, can operate jointly. Well neither do we. That is the whole point of the motion.
We heard tonight about the unfairness that Ontario corn producers can market their product wherever and whenever they want yet western wheat growers cannot. We heard that Quebec wheat growers can market their product into Ontario yet western wheat growers cannot.
I would like to take a couple of minutes to recount my personal experience with this. My brother and I were farming up until the time I got elected to the House of Commons. We were farming 3,000 acres, producing wheat, barley, canola and grass seed in the Peace River country of British Columbia, not Alberta as a colleague said earlier.
We got into an effort to market some of our barley directly into the Caribou, to truck it ourselves through the Rocky Mountains and market it in the Caribou region. It was feed barley. When we did that we learned of a situation in the remainder of the province of British Columbia involving the wheat growers in the Creston valley and other areas of B.C. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the arable land in British Columbia is in the Peace River country on the east side of the Rocky mountains. Although that was small acreage, they could market their wheat directly to Rogers Flour Mill in Armstrong in the Okanagan interior but I could not. The same province, the same country. We were in tough times then.
Most farmers were just barely getting by. Grain prices were in the basement. Is that fair? That is what I want the member to answer.
Is it fair that some farmers in this country depending upon where they live can take advantage of opportunities and market their wheat directly to a flour mill? It is still going on today. Farmers in another area, because it is under the umbrella of the Canadian Wheat Board, are prevented from taking advantage of that opportunity. That is what we are talking about tonight. We are talking about freedom, choice and fairness.