Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure entering a debate on the Canadian Wheat Board.
I suggest the auditor general should not audit books just of government agencies but also the common sense of the Liberal government. The auditor general would have a very small job. It would not take him very long.
When I hear members on the government side saying look at what the wheat board is doing, let the members opposite tell me why every farmer is growing more canola than the previous year. The farmer is growing more lentils, more navy beans and more hemp. The Liberal government supported the growing of hemp. If the wheat board is doing such a good job with their grains why do we need all these other crops? Why can these crops work on an open market?
We sold our canola at an average of 30 bushels an acre for an average of better than $8 a bushel. My neighbour is selling barley for 11 cents. Good lord, how is my neighbour supposed to grow the bloody stuff? He cannot even drive it to the fields to sow it for that price. This is the job the wheat board is doing for us?
A commodity broker phoned me about two weeks ago and asked why he cannot buy durum from Canada. He said he bid $20 a tonne over asking price at Thunder Bay for a unit train of durum and he cannot buy it, but on the world market they are selling the same bloody durum for $20 under the asking price. He says every trader on the floor knows this.
Why are the Americans upset over the Canadian Wheat Board dumping grain? Why is this government putting at risk $1.73 billion worth of livestock going into the U.S. because it will not have a transparent wheat board? This government will not allow people to look at what it is dumping into the U.S.
We are setting the stage for a depression in western Canada if we do not get transparency. The American farmer is quite willing to compete with the Canadian farmer but he is not willing to do it at the risk of having Canadian products dumped into their market at half price. The Americans cannot subsidize their farmers enough. The Europeans cannot subsidize their farmers enough to keep up that kind of marketing system.
We need co-operation between Americans and Canadians to fight the Europeans who are our enemy but common sense on that side of the House tells us no, let us play politics with this issue. Let us do exactly what we have been doing for the last 45 years. Do the politicking on the backs of Canadian farmers. Let them suffer. The farmers cannot put food on their own tables and this government does not have enough common sense to have the books audited by the auditor general, the most accountable, the most respected person in this government.
If that is anything less than a little common sense what do we expect of our government? What will we expect of it next? Protest signs coming down and pepper spray. What are we going to do to the farmers so they keep selling grain through the wheat board, water cannons, pepper spray or what?
At this rate farmers cannot afford to grow this grain anymore. When we get 11 cents for barley, $2 for number one high protein milling wheat it does not work to pay for a $250,000 combine. It does not pay to pay our property taxes on the land. We cannot do it.
If this government does not smarten up and get realistic and put some the money into wheat board grains we are not going to have farmers left. All we are going to have is some hobby farmers who are working for the government or some other agency to put enough money up so they can afford to truck their grain to the field, sow it and then truck it off and give it to the wheat board.
We cannot afford to live without a profit. The only profit in the Canadian farm scene today is special crops and this government knows it. This government has been supporting the industry of special crops or it would not have put the motion on the floor to grow hemp. These people have been smoking something and I do not know what it is. We cannot get it through their thick heads that competition sets the price in the world today, competition drives the markets, competition will be there and it will make farmers profitable.