Mr. Speaker, in speaking to being surrounded by Reformers as opposed to Liberals, and the hon. gentleman suggests that I am not surrounded by enemies, I should rethink that one. In either fashion if I did not have friends from my own caucus surrounding me, I would suspect that perhaps they would be enemies. However, I do thank the hon. member. The member for Portage—Lisgar was a valuable member on the committee.
With respect to the inclusion clause the best solution as the member knows is to simply have taken it out of the legislation totally, not to have inclusion, not to have exclusion. That was the argument of the member from Prince Edward Island, that if you have exclusion you should have inclusion. That did not happen.
We tried. We put amendments forward to do that and the best solution that could come from this came from the Senate where it will now go to the minister. There will be a plebiscite. There will be a vote of producers as the member has indicated. I suppose it is positive that producers do have the right and should have the right to say whether it will be included in the Canadian Wheat Board. It is another check and balance.
The final check and balance is that it comes to this House. There is a protection there even for those producers who may still not want to have any commodities included. We are talking about commodities that in my estimation should not be included in the Canadian Wheat Board. It is important that we have that other check and balance, as the hon. member has put forward.
The best solution was not to have any inclusion as was suggested many times to the member from Prince Edward Island who actually put this thought forward although it was not included in Bill C-72 in the last parliament.