Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be back in this nice cozy little room we have here.
Yesterday, before I was interrupted by the bells, I was making an effort to make a case to my committee colleagues that the money that will be freed up by the minister's decision to change the Canadian farm families options program could be better spent elsewhere. I pointed out the fact that when the program was initially announced, there was much criticism of it and people were saying that it was inappropriate or that it wasn't the best way to go about doing things. The minister has responded to that and made some changes, but most importantly, he said that the dollars that had initially been earmarked for the program would remain there for farmers, and that those dollars would be spent on farm programs.
It was in that context that I started to think about some of the alternatives that we might be able to spend those dollars on if we had access to them. Recently both through regular committee hearings as well as in our coast-to-coast consultations, we heard a lot of good ideas. Therefore, I said that it was my goal to present some of those ideas we heard in those meetings and some other ideas that I've heard here and there in my riding and elsewhere, and from some of my more experienced colleagues around this table, and to put those ideas on the table, and in so doing convince a majority of members of this committee that we ought to actually defeat Mr. Easter's motion, and that those dollars could be better spent somewhere else.
I had started to identify a few examples that I had come up with myself really in an attempt to persuade my colleagues to change their point of view. I said that in a quick brainstorm I had come up with a dozen ideas. Yesterday, in the brief time that I had, I had the opportunity to cover three of those and I'd like to move on to the balance of that list today. Before I do that, I just want to briefly recap the three that I did cover yesterday.
The first was that I think we should be investigating some sort of a program to help young farmers buy farms. We heard some interesting ideas and we have some interesting ideas. I suggested that possibly we should look to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and some of the programs they had developed over the years to help young families buy homes. Maybe some of that logic or some of those financial structures could be used with farm purchasing.
The second idea that I put forward was to do with genetics. I pointed out that for many livestock farmers in Canada, in addition, possibly, to their primary source of income--for dairy farmers I was thinking it would be their milk cheque, obviously--that exporting genetics—semen, embryos as well as live animals—was a very important secondary income stream for them.