Mr. Speaker, I was pleased earlier to hear the member for Frontenac talk about the objective of the Canadian Wheat Board which is to maximize the sale of Canadian wheat and the return to producers. It is good to hear one of the opposition parties talk in a positive way about a couple of the great institutions we have in this country: the Canadian What Board and the Canadian Dairy Commission and hear him put a proposal to build on those institutions rather than destroy them.
Earlier I raised a question with the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster who would in essence destroy the wheat board with this motion and I could not seem to get through to him that the lowest seller sets the price.
I will put the question of the member for Frontenac. When one is selling products and people are competing against one another to bring down the price structure-the member for Frontenac is well aware of the beef industry and how sometimes prices are brought down in that industry by the fact that one producer wants to undermine another-and I wonder if he could tell us if the same thing might happen to wheat growers.
The ultimate impact of this motion would be that we could in essence have greater than 100,000 producers competing against each other and trying to undercut the price structure. The hon. member claims that would not happen. A producer might be in some financial difficulty-and I know the Reform Party does not seem to be concerned about that-who when the option is there for that producer to say to his banker that there will be a final payment in which returns are maximized under the Canadian Wheat Board, but now under this motion he would be forced to sell now and undermine the price structure.
I wonder if the member for Frontenac has any concerns that the negative competition being promoted by the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster might undermine the price structure and force farmers into greater financial difficulty?