Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Of course I'm going to disagree with Mr. Easter's last comments. This is about going back. Quite often, over the history of time, not just ministers of agriculture, but ministers in all departments get accused, as politicians do, about not listening. Here we've got laid out some happenings that were very clearly.... A decision was made by a minister based on criticism and input, some comments, not just from farm leaders, but from every opposition member or party and certainly from every opposition member on this committee. So the minister reacted to that and went from that.
Now, when this program first came out, being an old skeptic of a farmer.... I guess it's human nature for me. I always have a doubt when I hear about a new government program. Is it going to work? I think there was no doubt, Mr. Chairman, that a certain amount of this money went out from there.
But going back to the criticism, just year-long right up until right before the announcement, I was still getting criticism in my office about this program. Why don't you get that money so that it will get out and do farmers and producers around the country some good?
So on this issue about income tax filing and what have you, I want to make it clear again, I was in no way inferring in my rebuttal of Mr. Easter's comments that farmers were doing something illegal. We know it was within the legal means, but it was Mr. Easter who insinuated--at least I could take that, and I think many could--that they were cooking their books.
We were in the west, I believe, Mr. Chairman, when it was announced that this program was to be phased out over the next year. I know that from that point on, and it was something that I hadn't heard of at the time, many farmers called me to tell me that they were going to rework their income tax and refile it based on that announcement. I know that many have, because they've told me that. And if Mr. Easter's motion was successful, those people there—and I'm sure if it's happened in my riding, it's happened across the country—would be SOL as far as this program. So using that point, we would definitely be going backwards to go back and revisit this.
On another note again—