One of the ideas of having a federal-provincial framework on all these things is that you are supposed to work together on common policy objectives. You're supposed to adhere to national standards, and you're supposed to play by the rules. When wealthy provinces decide to kick in $200 million or $300 million, other provinces look on and say, well, I just can't match it; I don't have the flexibility and I don't have the surplus. So it makes it difficult, especially when they're neighbouring provinces.
That said, there has always been some provincial programming, whether it's differences in production insurance or the ASRA program in Quebec, that tends to do something a little extra for their specific needs. A certain amount of that goes on. I still think it's in the best interests overall of the agriculture industry to try to coordinate this nationally; otherwise you'll end up with farmers just shopping for the best deal and you'll end up with producers pulling out of one province and going to another. You'll end up with farmers unable to weather the storm--and sometimes literally a storm--because they just don't have the flexibility that a wealthier province has. It seems to me that it's better overall to have national standards and national programming shared federally and provincially than to have all provinces going their own way. We can do that, but it will be a completely ad hoc thing and it will be every man for himself, and I don't think that's in the best interests of Canadian agriculture.