Mr. Speaker, we are here again tonight because of the member's unhealthy obsession with the Canadian Wheat Board. It is all we hear from him. His rhetoric gets wilder and wilder. I guess we are getting more and more used to that.
I want to respond to his question that he asked some months ago. The Canadian Wheat Board has provided the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board with the price of each of its durum wheat sales to Algeria for the last 10 years. While the Wheat Board says that this is commercially confidential information that cannot be released publicly, the minister stands by his comments that he is willing to release those numbers so that farmers can see what they really are. He has made that clear in the past and he is waiting for their permission and their cooperation to do that and we would look forward to that.
During his recent testimony before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food the interim president and CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board said that farmers should just trust the Canadian Wheat Board when it says it has obtained fair value in relation to the values available to its international competitors, particularly in the Algerian market.
The Canadian Wheat Board has told farmers for far too long that they should just trust the CWB. The minister's interpretation of the information provided to him by the Canadian Wheat Board on the price of each of its durum sales to Algeria for the last 10 years is vastly different from what the Canadian Wheat Board claims.
While the Canadian Wheat Board dismisses the allegation that the Wheat Board has been underselling the market for durum wheat in Algeria and says the allegation appears to have originated from material circulated by the U.S. Wheat Associates, the government finds it ironic that the Wheat Board has asked the minister not to publicly release the information provided to him.
In fact, the government is not convinced that Algeria is not getting a special deal from the Canadian Wheat Board because the news report came from an Algerian official who had publicly stated that Algeria saves tens of dollars per tonne purchasing durum from the Canadian Wheat Board. If it is three tens of dollars per tonne, that is a dollar a bushel that western Canadian farmers are not getting on their durum sales that they should be getting. It is only natural that western Canadian farmers are asking questions about what is going on with the pricing of this grain.
The Canadian Wheat Board has tried to box the minister in on this issue by once again asking farmers and the public to just trust its interpretation of information which it is unwilling to share with the very farmers on whose behalf it says that it is maximizing returns. The government expects the Wheat Board to work hard to get the best value for Canadian farmers and feels that farmers have the right to see evidence if that is indeed happening.
I would like to remind hon. members that this debate underscores the importance of the inclusion of the Canadian Wheat Board under the Access to Information Act which happened effective April 1, 2007. This was something that was long in coming and farmers had waited for for many years.
By extending application of the Access to Information Act to the Canadian Wheat Board, the government is making the organization more open. It is making it more transparent. It is providing all Canadians and especially the wheat and barley farmers of western Canada who are forced to deal with it with broader access to information about and from this organization.
Members can be assured that the government is committed to providing marketing choice to western Canadian farmers with the Wheat Board as one of those options in their choice.
The government is moving forward with amendments to Canadian Wheat Board regulations to provide marketing choice, in particular, for the western Canadian barley producers, as of August 1, 2007. Our producers look forward with great expectation to the opportunities that will come from that.