Mr. Chair, that is one of the reasons that we did the kinds of consultations we did with the farm community last year. We came down with a report that identified the real problem in the farm community as the lack of market power.
If we look at this year we will find that while farm incomes are the lowest they have been, even with record government payments that took them out of the red and put them into the black, they are still having financial difficulty. While that is happening, the agri-food sector is having record profits in terms of the chemical industry, the pesticide industry, the fertilizer industry and the grain marketing industry. I might say that in terms of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture advocating doing away with the Canadian Wheat Board, there is a benchmark study that shows that single desk selling actually adds $160 million per year to farmers' pockets. The parliamentary secretary's position in trying to advocate away that single desk selling will take $160 million out of those farmers' pockets who are going broke and put it in the pockets of the agri-business sector which is receiving record profits. That is not the answer.
I will quote William Heffernan, a sociologist, who had it right when he said that “economic power, not efficiency predicts survival in the system”. That is what we need to do. We need to empower farmers in the farm community through marketing agencies, such as the Canadian Wheat Board and supply management and deal at the WTO, and ensure that a government has safety net programs to assist farmers when world prices are low.