Thank you.
I think this committee heard from the Canadian Pork Council a month or so ago. The safety net committee of that organization certainly worked with CFA and others to go through some of the years before CAIS was ever developed, when we had NISA and we were getting out of tripartite. There was a tremendous number of really good ideas, some of them that would actually work for farmers. But they cost a lot of money. I think that was the actual, real reason. I know some of it's hidden behind trade issues and so on, and frankly, I think some of it is hidden behind trade issues that maybe aren't really there. If the will is there, then there's a way to do it.
We do have a team of well-intentioned bureaucrats who will cling, to their deaths, to this program because they believe absolutely in it, that it's the right program, and so on. Actually, I met with one a couple of weeks ago. He said, “But in principle, it's the right program.” I said, “No, it's not. Our farmers are going broke. You can philosophically talk about that all you want, but it's not working.” “Well, it works in some places,” he said. Well, maybe. But that's where they're coming from, so I think that's a big challenge, too.
I know, as Allan said, that you guys are the policy-makers, but you have to rely on these people who are there. They're not all mean-spirited, but sometimes the ones we meet are.