Mr. Speaker, let me begin where the previous speaker left off in the questions and comments portion. He was demanding I suppose that we concede his point, that a voluntary dual marketing system is in fact viable. I was raised on the Prairies. I grew up within a stone's throw of the Canadian Wheat Board. I now represent the offices of the Wheat Board.
I ask my colleague to look back a bit in history if he believes that a voluntary wheat board is viable. He should not take my word for it, but John Morriss, the editor of the Farmers' Independent Weekly, asks us to recall the voluntary central selling agency run by the pools in the 1920s, and then the voluntary Canadian wheat board which began in 1935. Both had spectacular bankruptcies; in fact, they were probably the two biggest business failures in Canadian history at that time. The voluntary Canadian wheat board at that time lost $62 million in 1938-39 which was an enormous sum of money at that time. It seems like a frivolous amount of money today, but it is not. It was devastating to the prairie economy, especially in the 1930s.
The reason that dual market will not work is obvious to many of us who have considered this. I respectfully ask my colleague to entertain this as a legitimate argument at least. If the open market is higher than the initial payment, then the board gets few deliveries because people would go to the open market. If the initial payment was higher than the open market, it would get all the deliveries, but it would have to sell them at a loss. Is that not a predictable consequence of a voluntary dual market?
It seems obvious to me, but by the same token, perhaps the only honest thing we can say about this whole debate is that my colleague has strongly held views and I have strongly held views and in that situation, we have a solution for that kind of impasse. It is called free and open exchange of debate and a free and democratic vote. That would decide things. That should be the way we deal with a legitimate disagreement between two factions, two rival views on the Canadian Prairies.
What is wrong with having a free exchange of information? That would be great, except the government intervened and put a gag order on one side. Imagine going into the next federal election if one party was statutorily prohibited from exchanging its points of view with the Canadian public. People would rise up in the streets and say it was a violation of basic democratic principles.
It is even worse because the advocates of smashing the Wheat Board are using public funds to mail out--I will not say misinformation; I will say their point of view--to mail out 10 percenters and bombard the voting area with their point of view. At the same time the Canadian Wheat Board is being gagged from communicating with its members with its point of view, even though its is not public money, it is private money. That is an interference that should never be tolerated.
If the Canadian public understood how significant that was, they would be outraged. That is the first problem. To have a free exchange of ideas and then a democratic vote, and then we both stipulate ourselves to live by the decision, may the best man win as it were, or woman, or person, seems fair.
The Conservatives have interfered with the free communication of ideas and the free debate by gagging one side of this legitimate argument and debate. Then for the vote they have also, we argue, interfered with the right to a free and open vote by first of all, rigging the question by making it one which is so vague. They will argue that it is very clear, but the three part vote option is not a clear question. As my colleague from Ottawa Centre said, we need a clarity act to determine perhaps what is a fair question.
Really we need to know whether people support the single desk monopoly sales system or whether they want to see it eradicated. Those are the only two choices farmers have, because leading authorities, far more scholarly than I on this subject, have determined the dual market idea is chimera. It is not based in fact. It cannot work for the very reasons that I outlined.
I could not put it any more clearly than John Morriss who said simply that if the open market is higher than the initial payment, the board would get few deliveries. All the farmers would sell their product on the open market. If the initial payment happened to be higher than the open market, the board would get all the deliveries, but they would have to sell them at a loss and they would be bankrupt within a year or two.
That is how it is going to happen. I am not predicting that is how it is going to happen. I am asking us to look back to what actually happened when there was a voluntary Canadian wheat board. We have to acknowledge history or we are doomed to repeat it.
We watched the first agricultural casualty on the Prairies that I represent. It was the prairie wheat pools when they corporatized hoping to surf on the private American market, just like the free traders here hope to surf on it. Instead, they surfed on losses and they put the Canadian Wheat Board on a predictable timeline.
Then the free trade agreement happened. Guess what? The ink was not even dry on the free trade agreement before the Americans began to challenge the Canadian Wheat Board. Since then the Americans have grieved the Canadian Wheat Board 11 separate times claiming unfair competition and unfair subsidies, and 11 separate times they lost and we won. We have a right to market our grain and it does not constitute a violation of the FTA or NAFTA.
This is an example of the Conservatives doing the bidding of the Americans. The Americans are still bound and determined to undermine this advantage that we have, the methodology by which we choose to market our grain. In unity there is strength and in unity we can compete on the biggest open international marketplaces. Divided we cannot. We will be gobbled up. We will be insignificant.
Is it fair for the minority of free traders within the Canadian Wheat Board to deny the monopoly advantage to the majority of the member producers in the Canadian Wheat Board? That is happening here. The Conservative Party is representing a minority of farmers, and the Conservatives know it is a minority, otherwise they would put a fair question before them and we would get a meaningful result. The Conservative Party is putting at jeopardy the monopoly advantage.
There is one study that came up at committee. In fact, it constitutes a part of the sixth report which we are calling upon the government to recognize. It is a price comparison done by western Canada's top farm economists which found that prairie producers benefit by $10 to $13 per tonne, or about $300 million annually, from having the Wheat Board monopoly. That remains the standard bearer among studies. Some find the advantage significantly higher; some find it marginally lower. The generally accepted study has this finding.
We would lose that advantage as soon as we start chipping away at unified single desk bargaining. I had the honour of sitting at that single desk when I visited the Canadian Wheat Board. There is such a desk. There is a single desk that the senior trader uses. We should recognize the dedication and commitment of the good people at the Canadian Wheat Board and the job they do in trying to get the very best prices for our prairie producers. They are dedicated, committed, earnest and smart. We attract the best and the brightest and they are on our side.
Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland have some very bright traders too, but they are on the other side. They are trying to get the best advantage for their employer. The guys at the Wheat Board work for the Canadian producer. It is a team that is second to none around the world and well respected. All of that is up for grabs. It will be jeopardized and lost.
Do the Conservatives even care? Can they look past their ideology for a moment to even consider that it is not just the monopoly that they are dealing with? This will change forever marketing and grain handling, the grain delivery system, perhaps the grading system, producer cars, risk management. All of these elements and components are up in the air too.
The port of Churchill is of critical importance to Manitoba. Do not think for a moment that the grain will be delivered.
Could I be down to one minute already, Mr. Speaker? That seems impossible.