Mr. Speaker, we do indeed support the bill, although we do not believe it goes far enough.
Certainly, the minister's point that the movement of grain is important to the economy, and trade is important, it makes no sense to go out there and sign trade deals when we cannot get our product to market. Transportation is functional to marketing and we believe the bill goes some distance to assure that transportation takes place in a timely fashion.
However, the bill falls very short in one area, and that is price transparency for producers. We know now that the spread between the export price and the price paid to producers is much greater than it was last fall. In fact, some would say that producers were getting 87% of the export price last fall, and now they are getting about 48%. This means the grain companies or someone in the system is profiting extensively at the expense of the farmers.
When the minister brought in legislation to allow this new selling system to take place, why did he not incorporate in either this bill or in previous legislation the requirement that the logistics would be in place to ensure that there would be proper movement, proper transparency in terms of pricing to farmers so farmers could be assured they would get their fair share of the market price?