Mr. Chair, tonight there were a lot of words missing from those we heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, that is for sure. On the Canadian Wheat Board issue he talked about marketing choice, but what he is really talking about is that we cannot have single-desk selling when we are doing other things, when are dual marketing.
There will be another time to debate that, but what those members are really doing if they do away with single-desk selling is disempowering farmers, taking power away from farmers, taking $160 million out of farmers' pockets and transferring it to the grain companies. That is exactly what they would do.
There will be other times to debate that issue, I hope, but what I want to know on that point is this. Will the parliamentary secretary assure us tonight that before there are any changes to the Canadian Wheat Board they will be debated in this House by way of legislation?
Secondly, what we are trying to do here tonight in this debate is force the government to deal with the immediate problem of putting cash in farmers' pockets prior to spring seeding, and what the parliamentary secretary said does not cut it. The Prime Minister never said there would be. The Minister of Agriculture never said there would be, and the parliamentary secretary, to basically cut through what he said, has said that there would be $500 million more than current safety net programs. The current safety net programs are the programs that he claims do not work.
The previous government paid ad hoc funding over and above those safety net programs to the tune of $1.7 billion. Is he willing to commit here tonight to at least match, prior to spring, that funding which the previous government put in place for farmers so they could get a crop in the ground in the spring?