Agriculture committee  Thank you. I want to comment about a couple of comments I've heard, not only from Mr. Easter but from some of my colleagues, and that is on this tie-in and this fear mongering about supply management. That quite frankly is irresponsible. You cannot tie the two together. The two organizations are totally different.

Agriculture committee  The point I was trying to make is that we have an institution that was designed, built, and structured so that it would be an exporter of raw materials to the world. The vision of agriculture that we have in Alberta is that we do not want to export raw materials to the world. We want to export value-added products and have our producers have ownership in that value chain.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is very good to be here today in Ottawa. I would like to start my comments by getting a bit of a feeling for the audience I'm speaking to. I would ask all members of Parliament who are not members of the Conservative Party but are representative of a constituency in the designated area to please raise their hands.

Agriculture committee  If that law was applied throughout the province.... Just to answer the question, Mr. Chairman, it's a valid question, and in the case of the example that was given by—

Agriculture committee  Certainly, but I think it's important to note that the law in Alberta applies to all Albertans, while the Canadian Wheat Board only applies to a certain portion of a designated area. Thank you for including me in the proceedings today. As you probably know, marketing choice and the issues in the grain-handling and transportation system are very important to the Alberta government, and I believe they're critical to the future growth and prosperity of the agrifood economy.