Mr. Speaker, I am thankful the member did not get partisan. I would not know where to start. He speaks about the marketing system of the wheat board maximizing returns. A while ago I heard the movie line “show me the money”. I have not seen it. I am a western Canadian farmer who is under that system. Of course the parliamentary secretary is not because he is in a different part of the country. I have not seen that maximization of returns. Nobody can show me the bottom line.
People are trying to take their products across borders because they are frustrated. They do not have any black ink on their bottom line. Bankers are saying the only way they are going to get out of it is to sell their land. Where do they go? What do they do? I have farmers in my riding who are 55 to 60 years old who are ready to pull the plug because there is no tomorrow for them. They have diversified, they have agriculture, they have done everything government levels have told them to do, and they cannot be there for next spring's seeding. Where are they going to go? At that age what are they going to retrain in or retool to do?
Liberals have killed jobs in this country. What jobs are these farmers going to take on? Their wives are driving school buses, they are driving school buses. They are doing everything they can to put bread on the table and they cannot keep it up. So where do we go?
There is no open accountability in the wheat board. The member says the board maximizes our returns. Look at the continental barley market a couple of years ago. It took barley and drove it right through the ceiling for price. Everybody loved it. It had to shut it down after two months because it was competing against other forces that the wheat board did not want it to be competing against. When we took oats out from under the board, productivity in oats went up by 2000% on the prairies.
Those facts and figures are there to be verified. I could go on all day.