Madam Speaker, I just did an interview with Barry Wilson of The Western Producer and he asked me how long I had been involved with the Wheat Board file. I have been involved since 1973. I remember the Saskatchewan wheat pool at one point in time, the Manitoba pool and the Alberta pool, and how their whole system was paid for with no debt by prairie producers. They were big and powerful at the time and they were an economic powerhouse. Today, they are gone.
The Wheat Board is the core in the middle that protects prairie grain farmers from the big railways, from the likes of Viterra, from Cargill and so on. Viterra today may think it is big and mighty, like the Saskatchewan wheat pool did at one time, but I am saying in the House right now that within five years it had better watch out. Who will pay the price? It will primarily be western producers.
Who does the member think will defend farmers in western Canada? Who has the political and economic clout to do it if the Wheat Board is destroyed, as Bill C-18 would do?