Thank you, gentlemen. We have met around this table many times, some of you more often than others. But some of us at the table have been here for a long time, addressing this same question. Is it a lack of commitment? Is it lack of will to understand the problem? What is our problem? I guess that's a question I put to myself as well as to you, but obviously we have some serious problems, moving forward.
A number of months ago, probably 20 or 22 months ago, the Ontario grain and oilseeds people, along with Quebec farmers, put together a proposal on business risk management, a model. I don't know how widely that was circulated throughout Canada, but it was a model based on units and where farmers had the engagement of a tripartite arrangement. For some reason, that made a lot of sense to me, because I don't think we can have any kind of program where there isn't a three-way partnership. I don't think farmers can expect government to be there on every front and be there to bail them out of a problem.
But the greater problem, as I've come to understand as I'm reaching the twilight days of my career in this venue, is that we have to make that commitment that food is a security matter to a country. I think someone—maybe it was you, Barry—referred to Britain and the history in Europe. If we look at what Europe's commitment to food is, it is to them a security matter. It's a sovereignty matter to them.
This is not a partisan matter; this is a matter of a government making a commitment to food security for its people. Once they make that commitment, they will find the wherewithal and the will to do it, and I think we're lacking that.
I fail to see how the APF consultations are going to achieve any great end, because we're going out with bureaucratic people, people from departments. They're going to listen to certain select people, and I think we're falling far short of the mark. We went across this country many times and we're about to begin to do that again. We may see you again sometime. But I just fail to see how we're going to, at the end of the day....
Can we not, once and for all, come together and find a solution? CAIS--is it going to be there? Do we want to have it? We have the sort of reverting back to the old NISA program, but when farmers don't have money, how are they going to match those dollars?
We've come out of four years of bad pricing, and there's no money. How much of the $1.5 billion that was promised in the 2006-07 year has been delivered? How much money is still there in contingency, sitting there from the years 2003, 2004, and 2005? We don't know that. I think farmers have a right to know what's there for them and what's still coming to them. But we don't know that, so we're always in limbo. We don't know whether we're working with last year's money, or this year's money, or next year's money.
So I'm lost and probably more bewildered in terms of our direction, but I'd like to have you tell me this. Do we have in the industry the will to go forward collectively? Could this be possible? Can we find the grains and oilseeds, the crop people, as well as the livestock people sitting down and drumming out a problem that you could deliver back to government, if government were to make the commitment that we're willing to sit down and finally put together something and put it to rest?
We tried that about seven or eight years ago, and we ended up with CAIS. We tried to be all things to all people, and it didn't work. Now we're trying to reinvent it. Somehow we've made some improvements, but I think it's a little late.