Mr. Speaker, I will provide one example to help explain what the minister has asked. A few months ago a producer was hauling grain to the elevator and when the spring advance was taken off, he was taking home 18ยข a bushel. He said that he was not even going to make his fuel payment by doing that because the advance, however much it was, was almost the total value of what he was receiving on his initial payment for the grain. His comment was that, regardless of what the advance was, the initial payment needed to be more. He needed to realize upfront more of the value of the crop that he was selling. The issue of the advances includes all of the tweaking that gets done and the options farmers have when they market their grain through the Board.
It has been stated here today that my party does not support the Canadian Wheat Board. We are against the monopoly of the Wheat Board. We have never ever advocated that the Wheat Board should not exist. We believe farmers should have the option of who they use to sell their wheat, malt and barley through.
Let us look at all of the things that have been done. I come back to the point that everything that has been done, all the talk, all the tweaking and all the options that have been put forward to producers to use as management tools as they go through their operations are not working to the extent that they need to in order to keep their operations viable. We have to go outside of the box entirely. We have to look at different ways of managing the system that is in place.
There is one thing that really surprised me. I have been a farmer for a short period of time. I have some farmland but I do not really consider myself a farmer. However it seemed to me that when I did not have much grain, I received a pretty good price for it but when I had a lot of grain, I did not receive much of a price for it. No matter what I would do, at the end of the year it is about the same. If I have a great crop, which I need almost every year now to make ends meet, the value is less. If I do not have a great crop, then there is lots of money for the bushels. Somewhere at some point in time we need to have a year where we get lots of bushels with higher prices. That just does not seem to happen too much in the agriculture community.
All of the things we have tried have failed to bring us to a point where the agriculture community has not lost money, an absolutely damning statistic that comes forward. We have to start making some really dramatic changes on how we think about this industry if we are going to stay, as Canada has been developed, an agricultural based country. The agriculture community built this country. It needs help and it needs help now.
Let us all work together and come up with some solutions. I think the one we have brought forward today is something we can do immediately to leave more money in the farmers' pockets.