Agriculture committee  I commented earlier that there are two national programs now. There's a third one being proposed by the federal government to address disasters. That program's being set up to deal with things like BSE or natural occurrences that really are disasters. In other words, producers are going to have the comfort that if they get to that situation, there's going to be probably even a better mechanism than the ad hoc dollars that came out under the BSE crisis.

Agriculture committee  Yes, Geri addressed when the good times were. This could be a good time, right now. There are a lot of opportunities, but there are many things distorting the opportunities. The U.S. Farm Bill is one thing that is taking some of those opportunities away. Secondly, you ask if there are too many programs.

Agriculture committee  They haven't committed to it, but we're having some really positive discussions with the Ontario government over that kind of programming. They certainly haven't committed to it yet, but yes, that would be the flavour we're getting, that they're getting pretty close to announcing some kind of risk management program for Ontario grains and oilseeds.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's correct. Currently we have CAIS and production insurance, which address income stability and crop perils. But they don't address some of the challenges that grains and oilseeds have regarding pricing due to the effect of, say, U.S. farm programs. The one thing you'd asked about earlier was the connection between the proposed programming in Ontario, the risk management program, and the federal program, CAIS.

Agriculture committee  I have a few comments on Agricorp. I think the issue with Agricorp is the program and its complexity rather than the organization. I think the organization has probably served us well. But there are so many ad hoc payments and complex cases, I think that's the bigger challenge.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I'm Peter Tuinema and I'm with the Ontario-Quebec Grain Farmers' Coalition. You heard this presentation yesterday, I guess, but one difference is that it's from me today, and the second is that it's in English. What I didn't realize is that my partners in Quebec weren't going to inject Quebec numbers; they actually used Ontario numbers.

Agriculture committee  You talked about the U.S. level of support. We'd like to have that. Generally that would help. We want to be careful nationally about whether we go down the road of that type of program. It could expose us to trade challenges or countervail challenges, so we have to be careful on that.

Agriculture committee  The amount would vary from year to year, depending on what the prices are. There would be spikes in payments, and in some years there would be practically no payment. Also, I said earlier, or someone else brought it up, we really have three programs running: CAIS, production insurance, and ad hoc dollars.

Agriculture committee  Do you mean income support programs?

Agriculture committee  In the case of ASRA, in Quebec, or the proposed program, it's a target price. If the price of that year falls below the target price, the producer is paid the difference between the two.

Agriculture committee  The producer year after year pays a premium for that, and that's where the one-third cost from the producer would come in. That's generally the way the program in Quebec is set up.

Agriculture committee  We have national programs now, CAIS and production insurance, and a whole lot of ad hoc programs to address some of the shortcomings of those programs. To me, if a national program is not necessarily working, you need something. And you already have some provinces, whether they have money or not, designing regional solutions.

Agriculture committee  You ask what the problem is. I think we need to get away from “one size fits all”. You talked about the dollars going out. Some of the previous speakers talked about, really, our having had three programs. We've had CAIS, production insurance, and ad hoc programs. I think enough dollars have been spent.

Agriculture committee  Thanks, William. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the solutions we're proposing. A national income support program with regional flexibility will provide grains and oilseeds producers with long-term income stability and predictability. Companion programming will provide a long-term bankable solution for farmers, shared costs and risks by government and farmers, and farmers will be paid only when the average world price falls below a target price.