I thought I had done a good job of making the connection between the points that I'm making and my general opposition to Mr. Easter's motion, but apparently I haven't, so I'll go back and do it again.
The minister committed a significant amount of money, over $500 million, to help farm families in Canada. There was a particular program put forward, the Canadian Farm Family Options program. I recall that when that program was introduced, it met with widespread criticism; many people thought it was inappropriate and that it was not the way to address the farm income challenge.
Where we're at now, Mr. Chair, is I believe my recommendations are not only somewhat on the mark; I actually believe they're entirely on the mark. The mark is, what do we do? I believe the minister made the right decision when he changed this program. I believe he made the right decision when he said that money was going to stay on the table to help Canadian farm families.
I think we should be moving on; that's why I will be voting against Mr. Easter's motion. I do not think we should rescind the changes; I think we should accept the changes as announced by the minister, and we should endeavour immediately to identify ways that the money that will be available now can be used to address the very problem that was initially identified by the minister, that being an income crisis on family farms.
I would rather see tax dollars spent in Canada figuring out ways to keep people on the farm, rather than spending tax dollars figuring out ways to help people get off the farm. I think this is an opportunity for us, and that's why I said when I started that my goal was to identify a list of ideas that I have had. I admit that there may be others at this table with other ideas and I look forward to hearing them, but these are some ideas that I want to put forward. My goal, as I've always said, is to present an argument that is so sufficiently compelling to other members of this committee as to cause them to change their position and come around to my position, which is that we ought to oppose this motion and that we ought to be thinking about other things to do with this money. That's where I'm at.
I believe I was on point five, which is on rural development. More specifically, I was talking about the need to expand access to high-speed Internet to farm families across Canada as quickly as possible. We all know that this will not be inexpensive. In my own riding there are places where they're laying fibre optic cable—