Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It was certainly good to hear such a variety of presentations. I thought for a minute I was in a time machine going forward. From the last presentation, I certainly think we might want to have the committee look at some of that at a later time.
For business risk management, I guess we're thinking more in terms of the present status and what we can do to improve the agricultural communities directly.
It boils down to Mr. Jacobson's concerns for the future in terms of farmers and where the farmers are going to come from. Without a good outlook in terms of what a career in agriculture has for that generation, young people will certainly not want to get involved. With business risk management, if we can't show them some success in terms of what is happening here across Canada in the agriculture communities, whether it be sons and daughters, neighbours across the way, or new immigrants who are getting into agriculture, it's going to be difficult for them to begin to devote a lifetime to agriculture.
One of the questions I've asked here at different sessions is this: do we have too many programs? Federally, a lot of money is spent. The province has put in various programs, and we have both regular and ad hoc programs. We seem to have a lot of consensus in terms of the idea of disaster relief, the need for crop insurance, and the need for research. There are probably other areas where we could federally put our cash payments.
FIrst, in terms of your experience, are there too many players? Are farmers too intimidated by paperwork, as you mentioned, trying to respond to bureaucrats or civil servants who probably don't know a whole lot about agriculture?
You talked about Eisenhower's quotation. Is it too big a mix for most farmers to really appreciate what anyone is doing? Do we really see the success from those programs that we, as either federal or provincial politicians, think we should be offering?