If the member would listen, he would realize from a competing farmer's point of view what the mistakes of the amendments the Reform Party is proposing would do to Canadian farmers.
As I was saying “Our export trade is dominated by a few large corporations who were interested in buying low and selling high”.
Maybe the members in the Reform Party just do not understand that it is the lowest price that sets the price. It is the lowest seller who sets the price in the international market. If there is one primary producer from Canada wanting to sell low, it brings down the price structure for the country as a whole. What the Canadian Wheat Board does by selling through a single desk is it tries to hold that price up and see that there is not negative competition undermining the Canadian price structure.
Mr. Carlson goes on to say “Our export trade is dominated by a few large corporations who are interested in buying low and selling high to enhance the earnings of their owners who are not generally the same people who produce the grain traded. The stated goal of free trade proponents in agriculture is to have a grain trade without national borders, without internal subsidies, without quota or tariffs and without pooling or price enhancing mechanisms like STEs. This would be a great world for grain buyers but a grim world for producers who would be fully at risk economically”.
He concludes by saying “If we destroy”—and this is what the Reform Party is trying to do through its amendments—“the various institutions that farmers in many countries have built to help themselves survive economically, we will have nothing left but producers standing bare among the ruins of structures that once empowered and protected them in a marketplace dominated by giants”.
That is where it is at. The Canadian Wheat Board does give us considerable power.
Let me come to the audit for a moment. Those members talk about wanting the auditor general to audit the books. The fact of the matter is that the Canadian Wheat Board's duly appointed external auditor chosen from the private sector is the well-respected accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche. Fully audited financial statements appear in every Canadian Wheat Board annual report.
Under Bill C-4 the producer controlled board of directors would have the power to create their own internal audit committee just like any other private company.
The Senate approved an amendment to Bill C-4 which would authorize the auditor general to conduct a one-time audit of the accounts and financial transactions of the corporation and to report back to the board of directors, which has a two-thirds majority of farmers, and the minister. That should be all that is required.
The fact of the matter is, this is the annual report, audited, as I said, by a respected auditing firm. It is 84 pages of financial transactions and information on the Canadian Wheat Board. Do we have that information on Cargill Grain? Certainly not. Do we have that transparency with some of the major grain companies? Certainly not.
It is reported in the introduction to the 1995-96 annual report of the Canadian Wheat Board that there was a performance evaluation done on the Canadian Wheat Board. The performance evaluation conducted during the 1995-96 crop year showed that Canada ranks highly with its customers in such areas as quality of product, customer service, technical support and dependability of supply.
Another study conducted by three economists showed that the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk generates an additional $265 million per year in wheat revenue for farmers, thereby enhancing Canada's competitiveness and, in fact, putting more money in producers' pockets.