Madam Speaker, that was an interesting, anti-democratic, incredible rant. The member's name is on the report, by the way, but he says that the 32 recommendations are good because he agrees with them. He says the committee did a good job on 32 recommendations but that the one he personally disagrees with is terrible. I wonder if anyone in the House or out in TV land can see that there is quite an inconsistency there.
He is anti-democratic in a number of ways. He is mad at us for listening to the farmers. We went to western Canada and heard from the farmers. He is mad at his colleagues because they listened to farmers. It was not the Canadian Alliance that pushed through this report. We agreed with what we heard from the farmers. This recommendation happens to be consistent with our policy, but to be fair to the members on his own side, they were willing to listen to the farmers and put in the recommendations that farmers asked for.
I thought it was interesting when he said that they even had to compromise when he was on the committee. He called it a compromise. They had to compromise in order to put in even a partially elected board. I would not call that a compromise unless someone did not want to do that in the first place and I do not think he should be talking to us about democracy.
I brought up the point about the Ontario wheat board. As a matter of interest, because the Canadian Wheat Board news release said that Ontario farmers get a lot less money than western Canadian farmers, I went to the wheat board website to check the PROIs, their predicted returns on investment. I checked them against the cash prices that the Ontario board was getting and there was no difference in those prices. For some of them Ontario's are higher and for others western Canada's are a little higher, but there is no benefit that we can see from the great Canadian Wheat Board in terms of returns to farmers.
That brings me to the benchmark study. The member talks about it as though it is gospel, the scripture for western Canada. In reality that study is very suspect in a number of areas. The criteria that the gentleman used, and which I suspect the wheat board suggested he use, puts the wheat board in a positive light in virtually every one of them while it puts the Americans in a negative light. The benchmark study is set up and they are going to try to use it in years from now as what they will call their benchmark, but the thing was not done fairly or at least evenly anyways.
I am also surprised that at the beginning he talked about how people should be arrested. Of course we do not have problems with people being held accountable for the law, but a number of gentlemen took a load of wheat across the border and some of them spent up to seven months in jail being strip-searched in prison cells. A number of others have been harassed. There was a trial the other day, which the member for Crowfoot mentioned. Years later these people are still being harassed by the Canadian Wheat Board, the justice system and others. I do not think that is a fair response to someone taking a load of grain across the border.
I would like to ask the member a question about pasta production. I am a producer in western Canada and have been for a long time. One of the reasons we need choice is that when I grow a crop such as grain and I want to do something with it, I have absolutely no choice but to sell it to the Canadian Wheat Board. I turn over the grain to the wheat board and it sells it back to me at a higher price. It never leaves my bin. It stays in the bin, but I am obligated to go to the wheat board. I am obligated to sell that grain at a higher price and then buy it back at what is commonly called the buyback price.
That buyback price has consistently taken the profits out of western Canadian farmers being able to process their grain. There were a number of major projects that would have gone ahead in western Canada if they could have even had the buyback removed on their own grain in their own projects, but that was not allowed. We consistently hear from small millers and people who are trying to start processing that the biggest impediment to business development in rural Saskatchewan in terms of wheat processing is the Canadian Wheat Board and its buyback process. I suggested during my speech that an easy way to give people a free market trial is to give them no cost buyback licences, which are given out to Ontario and Quebec farmers all the time. All we need is to have western Canadian people treated the same as people outside the designated area.
My question for the member is, why can western Canadian farmers not be allowed to process their own grain in their own communities?