Mr. Speaker, when we look at cooperatives, the previous government was a fairly strong promoter of the cooperative system, both within the social housing community, the farming community and many others. However, there used to be a strong cooperative movement, the pool movement, in western Canada in the grains sector.
There used to be the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the Manitoba Wheat Pool and the Alberta Wheat Pool. They were wholly owned by the farming community and their assets were built by that community. Those pools as cooperatives no longer exist. They have been taken over. Archer Daniels Midland has a 23% share in one of them.
Those pools, when they were operating as cooperatives in western Canada, did their best to try to return economic advantage to the farm community because their shareholders were farmers. Today that is not the case. Some of the shareholders of the grain companies in western Canada are farmers, but many of them are not. As I mentioned, Archer Daniels Midland has a 23% shareholder in AgriCorp.
Shareholders are on the New York Stock Exchange. They come from around the world and they are not interested in the farmers any more. They are only interested in the profits to themselves. Therefore, the cooperative movement has been very much undermined in western Canada. The last barrier against being exploited by the grain trade internationally is the Canadian Wheat Board, and that is what the Conservative government is about to undermine and cut away.