I'll just make a quick comment.
Yes, the money will help, I guess. I'm not meaning to be cynical, but the question would be when. Time is ticking by, and everybody's trying to get a crop in, and the most we're hearing is that everything's tied up because the federal and provincial governments are bickering over cost shares and who's going to do what. That's not very helpful.
I have just a couple of other comments on regional flexibility. I think what it boils down to is that provinces like Prince Edward Island only have so much money for agriculture. It's not that they're not putting money into agriculture. It's that they're helping us in other ways and can't always contribute their 40% share. I think for that reason alone there needs to be a little more flexibility on what is cost-shared in regions like this.
While we're on the term “flexibility”, the CAIS inventory transition program, as you know, was only budgeted at about half enough money, so there was a shortfall there. At the same time, there was a new program announced, the Canadian farm families options program, which in our understanding was far from being all spent. So the question was asked, why, since this is all agriculture, can't those dollars go towards topping up the transition program? The answer was that it's a separate pot and it has to go back to general revenue. That just seems a bit silly, because we're trying to help agriculture here.
I'm hoping, and I don't know what the answer is, that when Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada divide APF into more pillars they don't all have a separate drawer so that we're going to get that answer down the road, that the money can't go from one drawer to the other.
So there are lots of questions. I know that agriculture in the future needs people like Maria and Mark and Ryan. Wayne, I'm sure, will agree that when you drive around Prince Edward Island, you see we have literally missed a generation in agriculture, with a few exceptions. It's really positive to see so many young people interested, and we have to find ways to make sure they stay in the industry.