Mr. Bettle and Mr. Speer, I really enjoyed your presentations.
I congratulate you, Mr. Bettle, for looking at how to do that farm succession planning and for taking on the creditor role yourself. I guess I'd like to know from you what you think we can do as a committee to make a recommendation back to government on how to provide the tools to people like you to provide that succession credit.
If you look at a lot of the financial lenders out there, the big players don't want to do it anymore, or it's going to be done, as you said, at a high cost, and we don't want to go down that path again. When I took out my first loan in 1982, it was at 21%. I don't want to go back to that. When I pass on my farm to my kids, I want to make sure they have it at an affordable rate. So I'm interested to know whether you have any ideas on that path.
Mr. Speer, you talked about needing to broaden our knowledge base, and I couldn't agree more. We actually had some young farmers present to the committee who had backgrounds not in agriculture but had masters degrees in marketing and commerce and those types of business management programs.
Should we be incorporating into all our ag schools that it should be just standard process to consider, if you're going to get a degree in agriculture or even a diploma with the intent to return to the farm, that this should be a component of your education; and also to consider whether or not you're getting the extension services you need from your provincial ag department that would provide that type of knowledge base as well?
Those are my final two questions for you two gentlemen.