Thanks to the Standing Committee on Agriculture for inviting us here.
I'm just going to wing it. I have given you some information on the issue I'm talking about, and the issue is family farm transfers. As most of you are probably aware, you can transfer the family farm from parent to son or daughter, but where the problems come in for some of us is when we want to transfer it between siblings, from one brother or sister to the other.
I'm a dairy farmer and also a cranberry grower. Stan has a large dairy farm. We both have brothers who are partners in our farming operations. If there were, heaven forbid, an untimely death of either one of our brothers, our brothers have willed the farms over to our sons--their nephews--for the farms to continue.
That is where we run into problems, because that is when the capital gains are triggered. In this day and age, with everyone saying they want to save the family farm--it's a big issue for everyone to see the family farm continue--this actually works against us.
We're from the lower mainland. I know you have problems here in the Okanagan as well, where land values have shot way up, and I'm sure in other urban shadows throughout Canada, it's the same sort of deal, that land values actually have no relationship anymore to farm gate values. So when you are faced with that sort of situation, when the taxes become triggered in a transfer like that, it's almost impossible for the family farm to continue, unless you have a large farm operation of which you can maybe sell off a parcel. If you're lucky, you have that option, but for most farms, if they're a single unit, the end result will be that the farm will have to be sold in order to cover the taxes.
Some will argue the way around that is to take additional life insurance, which we do. We've also done a lot of estate planning, setting up family trusts in order that any future growth that might happen in the farm would be transferred through the trust. Those things are all very costly and very complicated. Life insurance is a great thing, but as we all get older it becomes more and more expensive. We also operate with debt, and we use the life insurance to cover that, so adding this on top becomes very challenging.
We've had discussions with other people, and we feel that to make some changes in that wouldn't mean a big revenue loss for the federal government. It's not as if every farmer is going to be benefiting from having this change made, but there are situations in which we do have farm families who really want to continue farming, and this is a real burden for them.
So as a revenue loss to the government, it wouldn't be a huge burden, yet it would be of huge benefit to the agricultural community. We're hearing all these young people today who are talking about how they would love to get into farming. We have young people who are in farming and are very talented, who have picked up generations of knowledge, and who, though a situation like this, could fall by the wayside because they can't continue. Then someone from the city comes to buy the farm--this is the ironic part--and with no agricultural background, they end up taking over the family farm. This is how we slowly lose our agricultural expertise.
These are just a few things in a nutshell that I have brought up. Stan has also hired an accountant to put some numbers together for you.
We just e-mailed this last night, so it was too late for this meeting, but the translators will get it translated and get that to you so you can see some comparisons, based on a one hundred-acre farm, and what the impacts would be on taxes.
Stan, would you like to add something to that?