Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to come before you today, particularly as chair of the task force on implementing marketing choice for wheat and barley. In addition to the two members of the task force here, the other members are Brenda Brindle, Mike Bast, John Groenewegen, and Bruce Johnson.

Agriculture committee  We'll set up Rob with the final closing....

Agriculture committee  I will come to the first part of the question. The task force was given a particular task. The minister did not request that we look at the question of whether the government should move in a particular direction. The policy direction was given to the task force. What we were asked to do was to identify and examine a number of either technical issues or transitional issues that should be addressed and how to address them.

Agriculture committee  That is a different question than what this group was asked to do. It's very appropriate in my capacity to be assisting the minister and the government to implement the policy--that is really my job. In terms of our particular task, we weren't asked to examine the various studies.

Agriculture committee  The task force didn't deal with that part of what the Wheat Board provided because that wasn't what we asked them to provide. We could have sought views of people--who supports which position and why--but that wasn't our task; it was to look at moving in this direction means...what?

Agriculture committee  Paul is going to address the question of the adjustment side on winners and losers.

Agriculture committee  Perhaps I'll try to answer your question. We spoke with a number of grain companies who came to see us--some small and some large ones. They have all operated with the Canadian Wheat Board system acting as a monopoly for as long as anyone can remember. The Canadian Wheat Board deals with all of them as a group, for many things.

Agriculture committee  What we're proposing is a transition period that allows enough time for the market to adjust. Frankly, it reminds me very much of when I was working on the free trade agreement with the United States. Before it happened, there was a lot of worry and concern about which companies were going to do well and which would not.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to add one comment. It's not a zero-sum game, that there are an equal number of winners and losers. Currently, flour millers and grain companies are allowed to operate as a group when dealing with the Wheat Board on a number of things. They can work together, they can negotiate together, talk together, and group together with the Canadian Wheat Board because it has monopoly powers.

Agriculture committee  In the current Canadian Wheat Board Act, there are a large number of government responsibilities and roles and regulations. At the end of the transition, CWB II would not have any regulatory powers at all, and there would be no governmental role. The legislative changes would be very significant from what's in the current act.

Agriculture committee  No, there will be a need for legislation, in the same way that there's an act of Parliament for the United Grain Growers set-up and there's an act of Parliament for CN Rail. Certain things would be in there with respect to governance at the end of the day, and there may be certain restrictions applying to ownership by farmers, percentages, that would be in legislation, and there would be all the transition amounts that would go from the current to the new act.

Agriculture committee  The approach we took was that when the Wheat Board is contributing to research, which they are for some market development activities.... CWB II would probably not play the same role, because some of these benefit the entire industry; they don't just benefit one player. Even if in our view it's going to be a significant player, we're giving three years.

Agriculture committee  I'll take the first question. This is one part of a process. Our task force was given one task, and it's only part of a much broader approach to making a decision. A meeting in Saskatoon was also one step in the process. The government has taken a clear policy direction. It took one step then; this is one step.

Agriculture committee  Maybe I can start, just to say it's proposed to start as a 100% prairie-farmer-owned entity. That's the start, and it's that way for at least the first couple of years. Then the board of directors of the day would have some flexibility to move partway down the path of being less than 100%, depending on what was put in the legislation.

Agriculture committee  Just in terms of assets, if you look at the numbers, you'll see there's a proposal that roughly a little over $100 million, which could be supplemented up to $200 million, be transferred to this entity.