Mr. Speaker, my sincere apologies.
The president of the Canadian Wheat Board, in his letter to the Senate committee, not the House committee, said that this is what the impact would be:
The cost of responding to such requests is not insignificant...Therefore, the true beneficiaries of adding the [Canadian Wheat Board] to [Access to Information Act] will primarily be non-farmers such as competitors and foreign antagonists that would be able to make information requests.
In other words, these are nuisance requests.
There are several single desk selling agencies in Quebec quite similar to the Canadian Wheat Board, without, of course, appointed directors, but they are not entities of the government of Quebec either. Why would the Bloc Québécois be willing to impose, desirous of imposing, additional costs on primary producers? It is the producers who pay all the costs to the Canadian Wheat Board, not the Government of Canada. Why would the Bloc be willing to get in bed with the Prime Minister and disadvantage western Canadian grain farmers in terms of competing with the rest of the world? Why?