Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you for being here.
I guess when we're talking about disaster relief programs, it's important to understand that it's the provinces that have to identify that a disaster has struck a particular area. It wouldn't be appropriate for the federal government to reach inside a province and say, “You have a disaster there”, and for the province to say, “No, we don't”. So I understand that there is frustration in terms of how you have to work with the provincial government first and then they have to approach us.
I've given great thought to this, and I have a hard time seeing it working any other way, because it just seems to be that it would be inappropriate for the federal government to be going up and down the different provinces, saying, “There's a disaster. How come you're not doing anything about it? There's another disaster over here.” It really does have to start with the provinces.
I think as well the idea is that the AgriRecovery addresses those extraordinary circumstances that arise. It's not meant to be a long-term solution or a long-term payment process; it's meant to address a discrete event. Something happened, and there's a payment that goes out based on it.
I think we saw that, for example, out west, with the flooding. That was a massive AgriRecovery payment, when one stops to think about it: $450 million, and it reaches over three provinces. So three provinces and the federal government were involved in it. It's one of the largest payments or payouts ever made in Canadian history, and it was done faster than ever before.
So I think there are some success stories, but I don't argue that everything's fine everywhere. I'm just pointing out that it's a system that does work, even though there are times when it doesn't seem to work well in certain circumstances.
I just wanted to follow up on the discussion about NISA versus AgriInvest, which to me is similar to NISA in that farmers themselves put away money. It's matched by the federal government, and the federal government in fact put in $600 million right up front to kick-start AgriInvest. Farmers have tremendous latitude in drawing from their AgriInvest accounts to support their first 15% in losses.
Perhaps, Ernie, you could comment on this: do you see AgriInvest as a valuable program? Are farmers making use of it? How do you see it being different from NISA?