I'll comment on both of the previous speakers, and I understand the concerns Bev has raised, and also Pierre.
I'll just start by saying that when I was first elected, we had this problem in Saskatchewan with drought. I remember that time there was a federal Conservative government and in Saskatchewan an NDP government. They were kind of throwing the ball back and forth, back and forth, to see who would be helping the farmers. There was no agreement. One was saying, “Well, it's the province; it should be the feds.” It was going back and forth, and I said to myself that something wasn't right.
I agree with what Pierre is saying; farmers want a level playing field.
The other point is that what my motion says is that this would be an eligible component. It doesn't mean that the whole AgriFlex program becomes business risk management. It's an insurance that we can help those producers, many of whom are being hit hard.
We always get this argument thrown back at us of countervail. Well, as a Canadian, I'm starting to get really angry at responses that are always, “Well, we can't do anything because the Americans are going to do this to us”, or “They're going to put a duty on us”. It's time, I think, for us--all of us--to stand up for farmers and to take responsibility and say that we have to do what's best for them.
Having said that, I have in front of me the Canadian Federation of Agriculture discussion points, and I think they lay it out clearly. They feel the federal and provincial governments should partner, creating and supporting “regional and commodity-specific agricultural investments, such as support for temporary declines in commodity prices, research and development initiatives, and production insurance enhancements”.
And then I'll just read one more paragraph: “AgriFlex will target funds to specific commodities and sectors in need.” And I think that's the key.
Recently, they say, horticulture producers have been hit “with a devastating combination of high labour costs and cheap imports due to the rapid appreciation of the Canadian dollar”. The AgriFlex fund can help them weather that storm with a tailor-made solution that keeps them farming.
So the idea, if I understand it correctly—I've been trying to get this through my head over these last few years—is that it's kind of like an emergency fund that's there, that can be tapped into quickly if we need it, rather than trying to react to each situation and saying, “Well, Province, how much are you going to put in?” and “What should the federal government be doing?” By the time all these discussions take place, it's too late. We could be dealing with a drought in Saskatchewan, we could be dealing with a hailstorm in British Columbia, or we could be dealing with a decline in prices.
It's a component that could be there. And it's not up to us to work out the details. If we agree to it in principle, then it's up to those officials, the specialists, to work on the details so that we have something there in the future to help our farmers. I think we all want to help them; we just seem to disagree on how we should go about this.