Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan farmers are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Farmers say the devil in this case is the minister responsible for the wheat board who seems incapable of getting the grain moving from prairie elevators to port.
A private supermarket can get thousands of products to thousands of consumers on the very day they need any one of them, but the wheat board cannot get one product to one port in the month the customer wants it let alone the right day. The government blames the railways, the railways blame the wheat board and the farmers pay. Bureaucratic inefficiency has cost farmers between $65 million and $115 million.
Some farmers in the Yorkton—Melville area have been denied this year's initial payment from the wheat board because they have not been able to pay back last year's initial payment. And why is that? They have not been able to sell their grain because all the elevators are plugged, again thanks to government intervention in the marketplace.
Farmers are telling me it is time for an exorcism to get the devil out of the grain transportation system in the prairies.