Mr. Speaker, I support the member for Portage—Lisgar in putting forward Bill C-283.
I would like to clarify the position of the Reform Party and myself with regard to the Canadian Wheat Board. We support the Canadian Wheat Board in its operation as a voluntary marketing agency. That should clarify NDP and Liberal statements which say that we are dead against it.
The member for Charleswood St. James—Assiniboia said that the Canadian Wheat Board is a competitor on the world stage. This competitor has to have the trust of the producers who supply it with product. That is where the current Canadian Wheat Board, with its single desk selling, falls down: basic trust.
The position of the Canadian Wheat Board, which is in essence the position of the current government due to the fact that it appoints so many people to the Canadian Wheat Board, is that it needs to keep prices, contracts and other assorted information secret. That may very well be true. Certainly Cargill, ADM, Sask Pool and the other big grain companies would also want to keep some of the information secret. The wheat board says that if it did not keep it secret it would not be able to extract premiums from the marketplace.
This is where the distrust comes in. How does the farmer know that in fact the premium is being extracted? This is where the socialist-type politicians represented by the NDP and the Liberals differ from myself and the Reform Party. We say that if the farmer wants to determine where the best price is, he goes to Cargill, he goes to the Canadian Wheat Board, he goes to UGG, he goes to Sask Pool and AgriCorp and they start giving him prices. “I will give you $4 for your wheat. I will give you $4.50. I will give you $4.75” and so on.
The farmer is no dummy. He is going to take the highest price. He does not need to know that the premium was extracted in Korea for instance. The point we have to make here is the information this bill would bring out would be a first step in attempting to get information so that farmers would trust the Canadian Wheat Board.
In the little time I have remaining I would like to comment on the Canadian Wheat Board elections that are coming up in a very short time. In the latest information we see that 33 of the 65 candidates are running on a voluntary wheat board platform. We will see that the vote will also reflect in an unofficial way a referendum on the support for a voluntary marketing board for Canadian wheat and barley. At the present time a price of 86 cents a bushel is being received in the west. That is clearly not good enough. Farmers need a choice.
With that I await the day when we have a voluntary wheat board and farmers can market their grain where they want.