Thank you, Mr. Chair.
There is no need for you to be nervous about testifying before the committee, Ms. Matheson-Wolters. There is no need to be shy. On the contrary, some of the best testimony given to members of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food often comes from people who work in the field, from people with first-hand knowledge of the crisis in the sector. People like yourself are in the best position to relate their experiences to us. I very much appreciated your testimony.
At this time, I would like to share with you the comments of a Quebec farmer regarding the crisis in the pork industry. He had this to say:
We should not delude ourselves into thinking that the new federal plan announced a few weeks ago will rescue hog producers. The plan gives them the option of either going into debt even further or abandoning hog farming altogether, with $75 million in outgoing premiums having been set aside for producers across the country! What a dismal outlook for the future... Over the years, the UPA has consistently been critical of the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization Program, now called AgriStability, and its failure to intervene effectively after three years of depressed prices, as evidenced today by the current situation in the pork industry.
He concluded his remarks on the following note:
We would not be in this situation if the federal government had listened to our concerns. How many times has the UPA demanded an AgriFlexibility program worthy of the name and with sufficient funding to cover the cost of our income security programs when the need arises?
These comments were made by Mr. Christian Lacasse, a farmer and the President of the Union des producteurs agricoles du Québec.
It's true that the federal government has announced some measures. No doubt you will hear government officials claim that millions of dollars have been spent on trying to resolve the crisis in the pork industry.
What is clear to me from Mr. Lacasse's comments is that we—and by we I mean the opposition parties as well— have long been calling for a genuine AgriFlexibility program that includes an income support component. In the last budget, the minister announced the AgriFlex proposal which is devoid of an income support component.
I would like to hear what you think about Mr. Lacasse's comments and about how useful a real AgriFlex program would be for producers.