Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all my colleagues for their, at times, very impassioned speeches about the Canadian Wheat Board. There is no question that on both sides of the House there is a real delineation of thought as to what it is we believe that farmers want.
It is ironic that there are farmers among us on both sides of the House who have different viewpoints on it. That is fair from the perspective of having different viewpoints, but what I find amazing about this whole debate is the government's insistence that somehow the market is the direct benefit to all farmers at all times.
It reminds me of my younger days when I was first married and my wife and I decided to seek out a financial planner and talk about raising some money to buy a home and do all the things that young couples do. I interviewed a financial planner who talked to me about the market. I thought it was wonderful that he was telling me exactly how it works, except what he kept repeating was not to worry and that things always get better. What I am hearing the government tell farmers about wheat, durum and barley is not to worry, it will always gets better and they will get better prices.
I have heard all about the risks that farmers take and they do. As the critic for agriculture, I understand the risks that farmers take when they put seed in the ground, buy equipment and decide on the rotation for the year. They make all of those decisions and then have to face the vagaries of the weather, whether it be the floods in southern Saskatchewan or southern Manitoba this year or frost.
Conservatives on this side never talk about the downside of the market. My friends on the other side constantly want to teach us about the markets, which is nice, but they should at least be honest and say that markets go up, yes indeed, and markets go down, absolutely. Folks who bought RRSPs in 2008 got a bit of recovery after that, but ask them how they are doing in 2011.
When people throw themselves to the markets, they do not have ultimate control. They are not the markets, they are just players. Depending on size, they are either big players or not so big. If they are not so big, they do not have the same clout as big players, which means that ultimately the big players make more than the smaller players or takes advantage of them.
My friends on the other side talk about value-added and this new pasta plant that is going to open in the Prairies, which is a wonderful thing. They insist that means that primary producers, the farmers, in the west would get a better price if they go on the open market. We have seen a stock circular put out by a particular company. If we happen to go through it, one line says its expectation of making additional profit is by paying lower prices for primary products.
It reminds us of what happens when value is added. The value gets added in and the price gets taken at the other side, which is not the farmer but the consumer. The middle guy, who is the producer-processor, is not the farmer. The farmer is at the other end of that chain actually putting things in at the beginning where the first price comes. When the processor or producing-manufacturing group in the centre who has the power cannot get more money from the consumer end and wants to increase profits, because that is what the company's stockholders want, they squeeze it out in costs.
My friends on the other side constantly let us know how knowledgeable they are on these things. All business owners know that they wring out costs if they can and they wring it out at the bottom, at the front end, the farmer. When farmers do not have the ability to go somewhere else, they are told they can go where they want.
I wonder how that will look in five years when they do not get the producer cars that they rely on any more or the track time they need to get to the coast, port or wherever it happens to be they cannot get any more because there is a new potash mine and all of a sudden CN or CP is saying the mine pays more and the farmers can wait.
My friends on the other side have talked about pulses. There is no question that pulse farms have done very well. One of the biggest complaints from the group around the pulse organization is that the biggest impediment in their ability to pay farmers well is getting their crop to market. Which market? Not in this country. They literally take it 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 kilometres across the globe to a market in either India or Southeast Asia. The largest single impediment to getting their crop there on time or losing the market, because they can, is the railway.
They are paying costs because ships are lying at anchor in the Port of Vancouver waiting for their product to get there and they are being held up because CN decided to send something else that made it more money. When grain farmers end up in that queue, and they will, they cannot move their product to market and the premium that is suggested by this market free enterprise government will be lost because they cannot get it there on time. The pulse groups are saying today that they will lose the market, not the premium, but the market, period, if they cannot move their crop.
It begs the question, if indeed we have such difficulty on both sides of the House on whether we should do this or that, we have really come to an impasse. We think we are right and members opposite think they are right. Why do we not just ask the folks who actually do it? Why do we not just ask the farmer?
It has been said here many times that there are 8 out of 10 elected board members. The government changed the requirements on how to elect them. An individual had to grow so much wheat. They had to do it in consecutive years, otherwise they did not get a ballot.
I heard earlier from some colleagues who said the widow of a farmer got a ballot for her husband, and that is unfortunate. I would not like my mum to get a ballot for my dad who is deceased either, but that happens from time to time.
We have folks on election lists in this country who are no longer with us. Lists sometimes are not that good. In this House we know lists are not always that good because we have our own lists of constituents. How many times have we sent things to constituents to have it returned to us because they do not live there or they are deceased?
However, if we were to hold a legitimate, government-held vote of the producers, agreed upon by the board, and asked them what they want, I think this House would be satisfied. On this side of the House we would be satisfied. If the producers told us what they want, we would say it is fair. Nothing more, nothing less. It is fair.
Now we are asking the folks we represent what they would like to do. Would they like this open market as has been described by members on the other side, market freedom, or would they want to continue down the road they have with the Wheat Board. If we asked them that question, and we could debate how we form the question, but if we asked them an honest, fair question from both sides, not a one-sided question, and let them decide, this House could then go about its business because they had made a decision.
Anecdotal stories are being told from one side or the other. My colleagues from Alberta say that in Alberta, this is what producers are saying. People call me from Alberta, and I am not from Alberta, who say they want to keep the Wheat Board. There is no question that there are some folks who want to keep it and there are some folks who do not. There is no question about that. Why do we not simply let them have the final say on all of this.
We should decide on the question we should put to them after debate, let them decide for themselves and accept their wishes, based on the fact that it is their ability and their democratic right to make a final decision on their lives. It is not necessarily mine. I do not farm wheat, and a lot of us do not, but at least farmers would be making a decision for themselves, not having it imposed on them by either side of the House, regardless of how the vote goes.