Yes, I agree entirely with Mike's observation on CAIS. AgriStability, and CAIS prior to that, were designed and might have worked in a normally functioning market. It just does not work whenever the margins are chronically low.
I looked at the P.E.I. agriculture insurance statistics. They manage the AgriStability here on the island. It's exactly as Mike said. The payments were quite large in the beginning, and now they've not panned out.
I heard an interesting presentation from an economist out of the University of Saskatchewan. Canada's system, our margins-based insurance system, especially when it's not working and we're not dealing with a normally functioning market, really puts the processing sector at risk. As a strategy you have to have production that's of consistent quality, reliable production, for the processors to invest and work in that economy. What we have now is a program that essentially provides no guarantee for investors to do that, whether they're producer cooperatives or outside investors, to further process our potatoes or whatever we're going to do.
AgriStability's a serious problem because it's a margins system and we don't have a normally functioning market. The only way to benefit from it is if you can identify your Olympic averaging and get the hell out, eh? That's not a plan.