Since I haven't raised this issue in New Brunswick, I need to do it.
As we're coming to the close of these public hearings on the road, there are some things that have very clearly been manifested: that we need to do things differently; that we need to take some lessons from other levels of government and other countries, perhaps, such as the United States, about how they do things—the recognition that certain programs could be perhaps deemed to be green if we did things and if we put the money forward in different ways, as Mr. Carmichael has pointed out on the biodiesel and ethanol side.
I also believe we need to take another lesson. Let me first of all start with the suggestion that we need to deem food security as important, as a policy statement from our country. If leadership in government makes the statement that sovereignty of our food supply is absolutely unquestionable, then we will find the necessary programs, then we will become creative in the way we do programming. I believe that.
I also believe that we need to eliminate ten provinces from the equation—not in terms of their input, but in terms of the delivery. We are fighting province against province. Quebec has a program called ASRA, as we all know, that can deliver money at a higher level than those in any other province in Canada, except perhaps Alberta. We in other provinces only look at that province as in an enviable position, and then of course we compete with it. Not only do we have transnational borders; we have interprovincial borders that we're dealing with.
We have to deal with these problems and eliminate them. I say once again, as Dr. Phil says, if it isn't working, then change it. Sometimes we have to start thinking outside the box we've worked in for the last many years. This is now my third time doing this, and as I said some days ago, the only thing that has changed is the colour of my hair, or perhaps the lack thereof, and the date on the calendar. We're still talking about the same things. It's time we moved forward.
Farmers want to make their money on the farm, not from the mailbox. We all want to eliminate the need for BRMs. Nevertheless, in the interim we may need them.
How would you feel about a central government delivery of programs? Consultations we have done enough of. As an example of what happened many years ago, back in the 1960s Eugene Whelan and Bill Stewart combined and brought together for the dairy community, and for the supply-managed sector as we know it today, the need for a supply management program. While it has its faults, it's been a very successful program, despite its faults. It was done with a limited amount of consultation and sort of arbitrarily put upon farmers, and those who are in it today wouldn't be without it.
So maybe we need to move from this point and start making some hard decisions. How do you feel about this one-level, one-tier-of-government delivery program?