Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to thank the standing committee for an invitation to present.
This being your last province to present to you, I think you've probably heard it all before. I was always one to believe that the more times you hear something, at the end of the day there must be a bit of truth to what you're hearing.
Anyway, the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture is P.E.I.'s largest general farm organization, representing over 600 individual farmers, with representation from each of the major commodity groups and agriculture production organizations making up our board of directors.
The focus on today's discussions, as we understand it, is to look at how to encourage young people or new people into a career in Canadian primary agriculture production. We've heard from some young farmers already this morning, and it is clear that we see significant challenges ahead of them. Yet they have optimism and energy to push ahead as they work to find solutions. We will need some of this optimism and energy to make the necessary changes to federal and provincial policies, in order to sustain agriculture in this country.
The first thing we have to acknowledge is that planning for the future is a good idea, but planning for the future without recognizing immediate needs makes no sense. If we can stabilize the current challenges, then the future will, to some extent, take care of itself. If agriculture is profitable, new entrants will come in on their own.
Immediate needs of our farm businesses must be addressed to stabilize the grain, horticulture, and livestock sectors. This is most appropriately done by correcting the AgriStability weaknesses, which have not enabled proper risk management since its inception in 2008. Ministers must move to amend AgriStability retroactive of 2008 by implementing the following: remove the negative margins and profitability tests; provide farmers with the choice of having either the top 15% of the reference margin coverage or participation in the AgriInvest program; increase the cap for contributions to AgriInvest from $1.5 million annual net sales to $3 million annual net sales, double-matching contributions from $22,500 to $45,000; provide the highest reference margin by using the calculation either on a five-year Olympic or previous three-year average reference period; increase negative margin coverage from 60% to 70%; and give greater consideration to business risk management programming, based on the cost of production rather than margin-based coverage. These changes would convert AgriStability to a more responsive program, with the capacity to deal effectively with changing market circumstances. The program would finally meet the accepted criteria of being predictable and bankable.
The P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture recommends that the government remove the non-BRM clause currently written into the AgriFlexibility policy and work with industry to ensure the program has adequate resources to meet the needs of Canadian farmers. Business risk management programs need to be flexible to address regional differences across the country. One size does not fit all. This is why AgriFlexibility was introduced to address regional differences and to create innovation to enhance these coexistent differences. We applaud government's efforts to address the reality, but this recognition needs to apply to business risk management programs as well. The prime example of where business risk management programs have fallen short for the Atlantic region is the hog sector. Problems in the hog sector were supposed to be addressed with the hog transition program, which encouraged producers to exit the industry. This was implemented to reduce the national supply of hogs. The Atlantic region does not contribute to the oversupply of hogs in Canada. We are net importers of red meat into our region. Why would our hog producers be encouraged to exit the industry as a result of a western oversupply problem? Working on a regional basis, all our agriculture programming is the only way to address the long term and create stability in the agriculture sector for future generations.