Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again today and speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-300.
The purpose of the bill is producer empowerment. “Who gets the final say with my product?”
There has been a lot of talk about the vote. The member from Mississauga talked about how the Canadian Wheat Board was a co-op. It is the only mandatory co-op I have ever heard of in the history of the globe. He talked at great length about how producers should be assured of that.
The member for Sault Ste. Marie said that grain farmers in western Canada had told him in Saskatoon that they were not in trouble because they had the Canadian Wheat Board as a safety net for them. That safety net is full of holes. A lot of farmers are slipping through it. We have a tremendous problem in the grains and oilseeds sector. They are hurting a lot.
I listened to all of this today. I was frustrated and angry. Then I started to think this was the best thing that could possibly happened on the bill. I know the opposition will kill the bill before we get a chance to talk about it in committee, and that is their right to do that. This is a democracy, but I grit my teeth. However, I then started to think.
I am going to get a tape of this sucker and I am going to send it out to every farmer on my database, and there are some 5,000 or 6,000 of them in my riding. They are going to get the biggest laugh of their lives out of this. It shows them who is controlling their livelihoods and how much they understand the pressure that they are putting them under and keeping them under with the Wheat Board, which will not flex like it should.
There is a lot of talk out there that farmers cannot go head to head with the big multinationals. Nobody is expecting them to do that. Nobody is saying the Wheat Board is even doing that.
We look at other examples in the grain sector such as canola, pulse growers, flax and rye. Oats is a great example. When oats were under the board, 50,000 tonnes was our export in a year. Now it is up to 1.3 million tonnes, plus a burgeoning processing sector in western Canada for oats. That is a success story. Cattle, pork and all these issues go head to head with the multinationals and do very well. They are not clamouring for some release from out underneath the marketing system they are held within.
There was some mention of transportation, that we were landlocked so we should not do anything but ship out the raw material. That is the absolute wrong way to go.
The report that the member for Malpeque put forward had a couple of points in it. It talked about producer empowerment to get higher up the food chain. This bill would do that. It would allow them to have the transportation costs become part of the purchase, not part of them. Since the Crow rate was taken away, it is killing us.
The Bloc always tries to tie supply management in this. The member who spoke about this used to sit on the agriculture committee. He should know better than that. I have been talking to people in the supply managed sector, the dairy side, and they say the comparison is apples and walnuts, not just apples and oranges.
This is the biggest difference. The supply managed sector is voluntary. If I decide I want to get into the sector, I buy some quota and I am in business. If I want to grow grain in western Canada, I am under the Wheat Board. I have no choice, none whatsoever. If I decide I want to take some quota in a supply managed sector and start a cheese factory, I can do that. I can do that with the quota I have or I can buy more quota, I can start a cheese factory and I can do what I want with it.
In the west, I cannot do that without going through the punitive buyback. That buyback entails me selling my wheat to the Wheat Board on paper. It charges me a buyback at whatever it says the world price is that day. Then it charges me freight and elevation to tidewater, those ports that I, as a western Canadian farmer, am supposed to subsidize and keep alive all on my own. I cannot stand that burden any more.
That is the big difference between them. One is voluntary and I can value add. The other one is mandatory and I cannot value add with my product without adding on about 30% to 40% to the input costs of that product, which makes it prohibitive. I cannot get a good bottom line. There is no way they are the same type of thing. We can support one and not the other simply because one is not open to any kind of change, or allowing the in or out. Therefore, that argument flies apart.
The member also quoted section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act. What the party left out was the minister can put wheat, barley or whatever is produced in any area in Canada. That means Quebec producers could be under the Canadian Wheat Board, the same as I am. I wish him well with that.
The Ontario wheat producers could be under that same single desk selling. If single desk is the answer and the ultimate control, then why do we have three separate marketing boards for grain products across the county? Why is there not one? Why do we not amalgamate them and everybody can roll around in the same bed. That is probably the answer.
The collectivism ideology of the NDP members will not let them grasp the idea that this is a private property right. I own that product, I will deal with it and market it as I want.