Canadian Wheat Board  Mr. Speaker, barely finished butchering the Canadian Wheat Board, the Conservatives have already set their sights on supply management. Yesterday, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands said, “We want to provide the same freedom for farmers right across the country”. Who other

Canadian Wheat Board  Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is killing the Canadian Wheat Board. This is going to destroy family farms. It is going to hurt rural communities. Let me quote The Economist: Smaller producers, faced with mounting marketing costs, will inevitably have to sell their farms

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  Mr. Speaker, the member for Red Deer is aware of a recent article in The Wall Street Journal that lauded the Wheat Board's demise because of the increased profits for grain companies, yet an article in The Economist warns of the tragedy that would prevail in western provinces

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  , various attempts have been made by producers, communities, farm organizations, governments and others to correct or at least to try to offset that imbalance. The strongest effort, and certainly the most successful, has come through the Canadian Wheat Board. After a number of dubious

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman and I will simply have to agree to disagree on that point. I support my side of the argument. A number of studies done by both the Wheat Board and independent organizations have analyzed this issue of the price premium that is available

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  Mr. Speaker, would the member reflect on what the prairie farmers have to say? Time after time Conservative members of Parliament have said the farmers want to get rid of the Canadian Wheat Board. However, 62% of prairie grain farmers actually want to keep it. That is the vast

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act   suspect the results would be similar to the results of the one conducted by the Canadian Wheat Board this past summer. Those results indicated that in the case of wheat something like 62% of prairie producers said they would prefer the single desk operation and in the case of barley

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act   as well as a number of other agencies that research and work on new plant varieties and in some cases attempt to resurrect historic varieties such as the one the hon. gentleman referred to. It is an integrated system. All of the pieces fit together. The Canadian Wheat Board has been

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act   down, closed off, the border closed, for 50,000 other farmers across the west, it is a serious matter that has to be treated seriously. The appropriate action was taken at the time What has also happened in the intervening 10 years is the democratization of the Canadian Wheat Board

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  Mr. Speaker, Conservative member after Conservative member have stood and said that they are grain farmers and that this is a good thing that will happen. Yet we know full well that a legitimate plebiscite was conducted by the Canadian Wheat Board. Members laugh, but I would

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act   producer, but devastating small prairie towns, whose economies depend on individual farmers with disposable income. There is a valid argument to be made that the government, by killing the Wheat Board, is going to be destroying family farms, that it is going to be making it that much

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  Mr. Speaker, the prairie grain farmers are intelligent individuals and they have had ample opportunity over the last number of months and years to get a very good assessment of what the Canadian Wheat Board is all about, the pros and the cons. The Wheat Board is there first

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act   of the Wheat Board who have admitted to me that thousands of farms will close because there are farmers who are past the average age of 50 who will not be able to withstand the transition. As a consequence, those small farms will close. Small economies in rural areas of the western

Canadian Wheat Board  Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives thought they could get away with their anti-democratic attack on western Canadian family farms with no fuss. Funny how people react when the government ignores them. Protests against the Conservative plan to kill the single desk system by farmers t

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act  Mr. Speaker, to what degree does the member believe that the grain farmers in the Prairies should be able to influence the decision of the government about the Wheat Board? I ask the member to reflect on the plebiscite that was conducted, in which 62% of the prairie wheat