Madam Speaker, I was hoping I would get the opportunity to raise another question but the member for Crowfoot said that my first one was so bad why would I get the opportunity to ask another.
I will say that in his loaded question to his colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands he talked about the issue of freedom and freedom of choice. The party over on the other side, the Canadian Alliance, always talks about law and order.
With respect to the individual that the member for Crowfoot talked about, he was arrested of course because he broke the laws of the land. We cannot have it both ways. When we have a law, we have a law. The laws are decided for the majority of the people. The law was broken and of course the legal authorities had to act.
I want to talk a fair bit about the report but I also want to get into recommendation 14. However, before I do that, the member opposite basically suggested that I do not have the right to speak on western agricultural issues. I refute that allegation.
Just for the record, I spent 17 years in the farm movement, 11 of them as president of the National Farmers Union with its head office in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. There is hardly a community in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River block that I have not been in. I have fought over the issues of grain transportation and marketing for most of my life. I continually keep in contact with western farmers. I am disgusted with what the Canadian Alliance members bring forward as if they are representing western Canadian agricultural interests. They are not representing the majority.
The other thing I should point out has to do with the hon. member's remarks about the board of directors of the Canadian Wheat Board being here for what he called lobbying. Do farm leaders elected to a board of directors give up the right to come in and talk to the minister of agriculture and leaders of the country in terms of the interests of the industry they are supposed to represent? I hope not. I am sure the member opposite is not saying that the grain companies should not come in here to lobby and try to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board. He certainly would not be applying the same principles to them. He tries to let on that it is a principled party over there.
I want to now deal with recommendation 14. I am not a member of the agricultural committee but I wish I had been on the agricultural committee when this particular recommendation had come forward because I would have fought tooth and nail against it. I cannot understand how the Canadian Alliance, in bed with the big merchants of grain and the grain companies, in its ability to give greater profits to the grain companies and less profits to farmers, managed to bamboozle the members of that agricultural committee into accepting this kind of recommendation.
The recommendation is worded “on a trial basis, a free market”. What a myth. Once we let the genie out of the bottle it is out of the bottle forever. The Canadian Wheat Board would be virtually destroyed.
The Canadian Alliance members have found another way. They have been talking for years about the fact that we need a dual marketing system and choice. When farmers strongly support the Canadian Wheat Board as a single desk selling agency they do so on the basis that they know a single seller in the marketplace can maximize returns back to primary producers.
It is difficult in these kinds of times when the European community, the United States and others, through subsidies and through export enhancement programs, are driving the price of grain down. When the price of grain is driven down then there are less returns for farmers.
The party opposite and the opponents of the Canadian Wheat Board try to make it look as though it is the Canadian Wheat Board's fault. It is not the Canadian Wheat Board's fault. The Canadian Wheat Board is able to maximize what is in the marketplace but it is not able to turn the marketplace on its head.
Let me make a couple of important points about the Canadian Wheat Board. I am glad we are having this debate today because I, for one, as a member of parliament and as a former farm leader, will be arguing strenuously with the government to absolutely reject recommendation 14 of this report. It destroys the Canadian Wheat Board marketing agency that farmers support.
Earlier in a question to the member, I said that we had a standing committee on agriculture in the first term of the government which I sat on. We held hearings about the Canadian Wheat Board across western Canada. We compromised and decided to put in place a board of directors that would be elected by the farmers in the country so they could determine their destiny and have the authority over the management and the governance of that particular board.
The farmers should be determining their own destiny. However, because those members over there are in bed with the grain companies, they are trying to undermine the ability of the elected farmers of western Canada to do their job. Those members are trying to confuse the issue. They are trying to undermine the ability of the Canadian Wheat Board's duly elected board of directors to do their job. That is sad. I thought they believed in some democracy but I guess I was wrong.
In his remarks the member opposite did talk about the Ontario Wheat Marketing Board. Yes, the Ontario Wheat Marketing Board does have greater flexibility but it has no real authority as a single desk seller. It does not have the authority to maximize returns to primary producers. The farmers who would give up the Canadian Wheat Board to move to an Ontario Wheat Marketing Board type would be able to enjoy greater flexibility, yes, and for the satisfaction of being able to do that they would enjoy lower returns.
I want to see farmers receive higher returns. I sat on the Prime Minister's task force on agriculture, which I will talk a little bit about in a moment, but what farmers really need out there is income.
This recommendation, supported and fostered by the Canadian Alliance, would undermine that. It would lower the returns for farmers. I cannot understand that kind of thinking.
The Canadian Wheat Board decided to do a benchmark study. This has been in dispute by opponents to the wheat board for a number of years. When there is an open market out there and there is a single desk selling agency it is difficult to determine what the best prices are.
The Canadian Wheat Board decided, which it has done in the past as well, to do what it called a benchmark study to try to determine the value the single desk marketing systems adds for farmers. It is interesting that the member opposite never spoke about that.
In 2000-01 the board initiated a process to help determine the value of the monopoly for wheat producers. The board focused the process initially on the wheat pool itself. The board hired Dr. Richard Gray, an economist and professor of agriculture economics at the University of Saskatchewan. He developed the methodology, et cetera.
The board had it audited. I do not want to spend a lot of time on this point but the important point is how financially valuable the Canadian Wheat Board was in the year 2000-01 to primary producers, to wheat growers. The benchmark showed that the value added by the current single desk system in western Canada was $160 million.
What does recommendation 14 really mean? We have a committee and a party talking about increasing income and using other programs to increase income because farmers direly need the money and they came up with a recommendation that will take $160 million out of farmers' pockets and give it to the grain companies? I do not think that is helping primary producers one bit, not at all. They should be ashamed of themselves for coming up with that kind of a recommendation.
They talked about flexibility. As I mentioned a moment ago, there is no evidence at all that the flexibility granted to the Ontario Wheat Marketing Board has increased prices. No studies have been done. However, as I said earlier, there is an opening here for the grain companies, those that do not give a hoot about primary producers' income, to use parties like the Canadian Alliance to subtly undermine the Canadian Wheat Board by saying to some of the primary producers that prices are low and they should blame it on the wheat board.
The real problem, and everyone knows it, is the international grain subsidies, the United States farm bill and the common agricultural policy in Europe. That is what they should be trying to address rather than destroying an institution that assists farmers in maximizing returns that are in the international marketplace.