Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with group 6 amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act and there are a total of six amendments here. Our party has proposed three of them and I would like to deal with them in some detail in the few minutes I have.
Amendment 35, regarding the pooling period, maintains the wheat board's pool account for the entire year, rather than having it broken down into shorter periods of time which is one of the proposals in Bill C-4.
The proposal, we believe, to shorten the pooling period is linked to cash buying, that is obvious, and other tools which are alleged by the minister responsible to make the board more flexible. We do not believe it would make the board more flexible, but we are sure that the long run result will be to undermine farmer confidence in the board and thus weaken the board in the long run.
Amendment 36 concerns the federal government guarantees.
This amendment, in the spirit of an earlier one, serves to maintain the government as the guarantor for the board rather than having the board set up a contingency fund to perform that task. I referred to that earlier when we were dealing with group 5 amendments.
Motion No. 39 is our other amendment regarding cash buying. I would like to spend a little more time going through what our hopes and expectations are in that regard.
Motion No. 39 is the amendment that would remove the current proposal in Bill C-4 to have the wheat board make cash purchases of grain. Bill C-4 does many things to undermine, we believe, the Canadian Wheat Board but nothing in the bill is more damaging than the proposal for cash buying. The wheat board has long had a practice of buying grain from farmers at announced prices and distributing profits to all producers on an equitable basis.
Now, under the proposals before us, in the brief time that has been allotted by the government, the wheat board will be able to buy grain from anyone, anywhere, at any time and at any price. We are absolutely convinced that this will totally destroy a fundamental pillar of the wheat board and it will undermine farmer confidence in it forever.
The proposals for cash buying are linked to other damaging proposals in Bill C-4. The contingency fund is one and the proposal to shorten the pooling period or have several pooling periods on a 12 month basis, which has been talked about before, is another.
As I noted, the Reform Party would have us go beyond even the weakening of these two pillars by attempting to destroy the third pillar which is the single desk selling via the dual marketing proposal.
Who is opposed to cash buying? The previous speaker was saying how many people have become involved in this and come together. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool does not think that cash buying makes a lot of sense in this plan. I remind viewers and members that the wheat pool in Saskatchewan is the largest grain buying organization in Canada. The sister pools in Manitoba and Alberta are also opposed. They are joined by many other groups, including the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities and the National Farmers Union.
Those are our comments on group 6. We want to leave the indelible impression that we are very much opposed and say no to cash buying.