Yes, I have a question, but first I'd like to make a little statement--a quick one.
I know we're going to be visiting a lot of locations and seeing a lot of young farmers. I would just hope that we keep the political rhetoric away from these sessions and remind the parliamentary secretary to go a little easy on cheerleading the minister, because it leaves us no choice but rebuttal. I would like to keep that away from these meetings, keep to the questions for the young people, the young farmers, and keep the cheerleading out of it. That's just a comment.
David, you mentioned your parents talking about NISA. I think NISA was one of the better programs, because if, for example, you had $300,000 worth of sales--I could be a little off with the numbers here--and put in 3%, it would be $9,000 put in, and I think the province would put in 3%, and the feds. So you had little pools. If you had $300,000 in sales, there would be $30,000 going into this pot, and as your sales went down or you had a rough year, you could pull from it. Also, really, if the farm built up a pot, you could pass it over when you sold the farm.
I think it was one of the best programs we ever had, especially for the horticulture industry. I think it was available to all non-supply management, so you had it in beef and pork.
What would you think, for a lot of these programs, if the government said, “We're not going to give the agriculture industry any more money; if they've been given $1 billion, that's it, they're not getting any more”?
With some of these industries, should we really look at them again and say, “Hold it; we did better things before. Maybe we should look at changing them around to maybe reintroduce a program like NISA”?