Mr. Chair, congratulations on your posting. I know you will do a good job and you will enjoy it as I did in a previous incarnation.
Again, I appreciate the hon. member's passion for agriculture. As he says, there is consensus that there are problems, especially in grains and oilseeds, and we all acknowledge that. Parts of the farm sector are doing well and those farmers are to be congratulated.
I did not set out in the morning to pick on the provinces when it comes to the CAIS program. They say that they want to transform it and that they want to try to make it work in the interim.
We had suggested during our campaign that we needed to replace CAIS with two separate programs, one for disaster relief and one for farm income generally. I am making that case as strong I can to the provinces, and I will make it over the next couple of months.
I agree with the member. I do not want to wait a year. We will be coming forward with proposals at our next federal-provincial meeting in June. As we agreed at the last federal-provincial meeting held here last month, between now and then we will making efforts to transform CAIS to ensure that in the interim we do all we can to improve the CAIS program.
It is the flagship program we inherited and we have to use it. I encourage farmers to involve themselves in it. We are going to try to make changes, some of which were talked about tonight. We are going to try to improve it in every way we can. We started last week and we are going to continue to make changes to try to make it more effective and so on. Again, we are not going to wait a year. There will be proposals in June for a replacement for CAIS that would involve separate disaster relief and support programs. I think that program will be winsome. I think farmers will like it, and I hope the provinces do as well.
Part of my task and part of the challenge that has been given to me by the Prime Minister is to make sure that we use the $500 million a year, the $2.5 billion, to properly fund the program, the core program so to speak, with a separate disaster relief program. I think we can do a good job with that. There may be other programs necessary from time to time for other crises that come along, and we will deal with that. We have seen it in the BSE problems. We have already sent out $755 million this year because we understand there is a crisis.
We are not waiting a year. The program changes will come and proposals will come. Because it is a federal-provincial shared agreement, I hope we will have consensus by June. Certainly we are going to have proposals by June.
I agree with the member we cannot wait long. That is why we are getting right at it.