Mr. Speaker, I certainly would not have brought this issue before Parliament the number of times I have over the past nine years, or over whatever number of years I have been pursuing it, if it were not a problem that is extremely important to the people of western Canada and to my constituents.
It is an important problem, as anyone who has seen a field would know. On my own farm, I had about 60 acres of canola completely wiped out one year. That was 60 acres in an exceptional year when there was actually some money in canola and it was worth about $350 an acre.
That is the kind of hit farmers simply cannot afford to take. If we multiply that by tens of thousands of farmers, in a bad year it is probably well beyond the $200 million figure, although I cannot vouch for the complete accuracy of that figure. It is our best estimate. Nobody has done the study to determine it.