Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I'll keep my remarks short.
My name is Greg Meredith and I am the assistant deputy minister of the farm financial programs at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Today I wanted to speak to you about the financial assistance to producers in Quebec and Alberta affected by golden nematode. From the start, producers were assisted with their income losses through our core business risk programs. You've heard them referred as AgriStability, formerly CAlS, but there are other pieces of the business risk management suite, including AgriRecovery, the disaster recovery component; AgriInsurance, crop insurance; and AgriInvest, which is a savings account that is shared between the government and producers. These programs ensured, at least in the short run, that producers were treated the same as any other producer in the country facing similar income losses, as compared to previous margins they were experiencing.
We also recognized that their situation is different. We therefore set up programs to help them cover certain unexpected costs they incurred to deal with the crisis, whether to destroy potatoes that could not be sold or to clean and disinfect warehouses and equipment. We also helped them to cover immediate costs related to switching to other crops. Measures offered differed from province to province and from situation to situation, and they varied depending on specific expenses and any transitions that had to be made.
I'll turn to the Quebec situation. In Quebec the federal government put in place a program to aid in the case of the disaster caused by the nematode and offered additional assistance through CFIA's Plant Protection Act to help affected farmers with the extraordinary costs. The province also implemented specific programming to assist the immediate needs of producers.
In total, government assistance for the 2006 crop year, the year the nematode was discovered, amounted to approximately $6.6 million for the 21 affected producers. Subsequently, in the 2007 crop year, special provisions were implemented under our existing AgriStability program to maintain coverage at historic levels, and that provided an additional $1.3 million to producers.
In the case of the Alberta situation, a similar response was implemented, but again, tailored to the specific situation the producers faced. In total, 39 farms were affected, by regulation, with two farms of those 39 with infested fields. And the total compensation was $16 million between the federal and provincial governments. AgriStability payments are currently being calculated for those producers on the same basis as they were for the Quebec producers.
We then switched from immediate assistance, based on our existing programs, to help with transition to the longer term. And having dealt with that immediate recovery, we are working with the producers to try to get a fix on their transition needs. The producers' land, as you've heard, is still able to produce some crops, and our initiatives are aimed at assisting with the transition to these alternative uses. We are not aiming to compensate producers for future lost revenue due the fact that they can't grow potatoes. And you may have heard that some of the alternative crops are just not as lucrative as the potato crop.
In Quebec both levels of government offered producers a lump-sum payment of $5 million to the 21 farms to assist in that transition. Together with the province, we believe these sums will help producers, on an individual basis, make the transition decisions they have to make. Together with the previous funding I mentioned, that brings the total funding to almost $13 million for the 21, roughly a little more than $600,000 each.
We are now in discussions with the Alberta farmers on their transition needs, and right now there are a number of complications. Until decisions on the regulatory status--my colleague Cameron Prince was referring to this--of the farms is finalized, it'll be difficult to come to a final number.
In terms of the longer-term perspective on how we help farmers in transition, we're dealing with that through an industry and government task force on the potato cyst nematode. We have a body, including the Canadian Horticultural Council, and that forum serves to coordinate the development of PCN surveillance guidelines, communication to producers on these issues, identification of research needs, and development of transition approaches for future incidents or outbreaks. Of course, discussions with the affected producers in Alberta and Quebec were held on a different track to get assistance to them quickly.
To conclude, Mr. Chair, we've dealt with the immediate needs of the producers through core programs and specific measures to assist in their recovery. We have a formal process in place to look at how we're going to deal with potato cyst nematode issues going forward. And finally, we're trying to work with those folks who were so badly hit in Alberta and Quebec to provide assistance with making the transition so they can continue farming operations.