Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, one of the things we do see is a great interest from young people to enter agriculture. In the past year, of the $5.1 billion that we've made in new disbursements, $1.6 billion was to loans with young farmers as participants, so we do know that on the conventional side

Agriculture committee  As I said, $1.6 billion of new lending went to young farmers. The other thing we have is unique products like our transition accelerator loan, which allows young farmers specifically to work with a patient vendor and get into a mortgage product with a modest down payment and st

Agriculture committee  Only to say that we continue to support young farmers, not only through loan products but also through the learning programs, software, and that's from 4-H, to colleges, to lending.

Agriculture committee  Well, I would say that one of our key efforts is to support our customers through all types of situations as we go through the cycle, such that a lot of our mortgage loans do provide the facility for the customer to take a principal payment holiday for up to one year. That money

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning. It's a pleasure to appear before the Special Committee on Cooperatives on behalf of Farm Credit Canada. My name is Lyndon Carlson. I'm the senior vice-president of marketing at FCC. With me today is Michael Hoffort, our senior vice-president

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  You are correct, we are not a cooperative ourselves. But as I said in my remarks, what we've found is that co-ops of all sizes, small and large, have unique financing needs. There are many co-ops that serve farmers exclusively in rural Canada. In many of the communities where we

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  FCC has governance with the Financial Administration Act, our own legislation, the Farm Credit Canada Act, as well as supervision from the Auditor General of Canada. So we have multiple layers of scrutiny that are undertaken with us. On an annual basis, the Auditor General examin

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  For sure, one thing I would say right off the bat is that because FCC has great products and flexible products, we attract a lot of customers. At the same time, I want to remind you that of course almost all of our customers, I would say somewhere between 96% and 98% of our custo

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I would say that when you look at our day-to-day practices we survey our staff, our front-line sales force, on a weekly basis to find out what is the lay of the land in terms of who is out there competing for the business. Based on our surveys, we would say that 75% of the time t

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We have a portfolio now that exceeds $23 billion. So when you look at our total lending, the cooperatives as an exclusive group would be less than 10%, but it would be a significant portion at that level.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  No, they have not. We have a board meeting coming up in the first week of August.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I do not know if the board has discussed it, actually.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Oh, for sure. These notes were prepared by management.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I guess what we looked at is that since 1959 we've had numerous reviews and legislative changes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  That's correct. In 2001 we received—