Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy the zealous comments of the hon. member for Malpeque. I consider him a real promoter of the Canadian Wheat Board. I would call him the Canadian Wheat Board's Stompin' Tom Connors because he believes in that thing. He would stomp everybody to death if they did not believe it. He has a strong view on this. I am wondering why because he has never sold a bushel to the board. The only reason I can think of that he would support the board is because he has purchased a lot of cheap feed grains from it for his dairy cows. I can see why he loves the wheat board.
The other question I would like to ask him is regarding the tremendous work he was talking about that the advisory board members have done. I am not going to argue against that because I do not think we can really judge it by the figures we see in the annual report.
Let us assume they did a tremendous job. Why would that not hold true also for the directors? If the advisory board members did such a good job, why not elect all 15 directors instead of appointing five? Is the member saying that western farmers only have 10 people in their constituency that could sit on the board, who have enough smarts to run the board, that they are short by five and that they have to pick them from somewhere out of a political system? To me that does not make sense.
As we know before the Senate hearings the Canadian Wheat Board finally admitted that it was one of the biggest players on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. I have never seen that reported in any of their audits. I wrote the wheat board commissioner Mr. Hehn to see if I could have an annual audit of the trading activities to see whether it made me any money or lost some. I also requested that from the minister. It is very slow in coming. I do not know for what reason. Perhaps the first audit still has not been printed. Perhaps it has not been reported in the previous audits.
I would like the member to respond to that, to see why these trading activities do not show up in any other annual audits.