Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful on the last point, that the government will at least make the gesture of making it possible for all of the witnesses to be heard. It would be pretty unseemly if some farm organizations and farm groups from western Canada were shut down or shut out simply because there was not enough time, when it is obviously possible to make time if we have the political will to do that. Anybody who would be shut out would be constituents of the government in large measure, so I do not think the government would be inclined to do that. I hope we will see that kind of generosity and flexibility from the government.
In terms of the willingness to accept amendments, I hope the experience from last year will be instructive to the government. Last year, many of these same issues were before the House and before the standing committee in consideration of Bill C-52, the legislation dealing with service level agreements. The arguments were all made. The government brought in the whips and voted down all the amendments. Now it is clear that was the wrong thing to do. At least some of those amendments would have made a difference. Some of those amendments could have prevented the problems we are now having, or at least reduced the consequences of those problems.
Based on that experience, I hope the government will be more open to hearing what the farm organizations are truly saying and respond to that testimony with concrete changes to the legislation. The government did not do a good job last year. It has an opportunity now to fix it. With that experience so recently in mind, I hope the government will learn from the mistakes made a year ago.