Mr. Chair, I will ask my questions in French. I encourage you to use your earpiece if necessary.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for your presentations.
The committee wanted to hear from farm producers and see how they were using current programs. Even though you all represent organizations, you are all still farmers. That is the best method we, as elected officials, have to see where things stand. When we implement a program, no matter how much we study it or review the criteria, we cannot know straightaway whether it will work well or not. I think you are having the same problem. When the government replaced the Canadian agricultural income stabilization program with agriinsurance, agriinvest, agrirecovery and agristability, the idea was that these programs would bring certain improvements, but it was not known whether those improvements would benefit producers in a tangible way out in the field, in real life, or whether they would provide producers with adequate income support and insurance.
The best time to take stock of a program, to see what the outcome has been for producers, which areas need to be improved and what has worked well, is after a few years of use—and, by the way, I have been urging the committee to review these programs. We saw proof of that earlier: we heard that agriinsurance was working fairly well. So not everything has been negative, but some issues keep coming up. We seem to be hearing the same complaints, especially as far as agristability goes. When the minister appeared before the committee last week, I told him about those complaints. Basically, producers had the same complaints about agristability as they did about the CAIS program. For instance, the cost of production is not taken into account. And that creates problems we are familiar with. When producers are in serious trouble for a number of years in a row, similar to what you experienced in the grain sector and what the cattle sector is experiencing now, they cannot take advantage of the agristability program. So changes need to be made.
When the minister was here, I did not get the sense that he was very open to such change. As Mr. Littlejohn said, the minister made no commitments in his speech. Nor did he make any in his remarks before the committee. You can read what he said. He did tell us, however, that agristability was better than the CAIS. But you, yourselves, told us that they were more or less the same thing. It was like trading six of one for half a dozen of the other, as they say.
In your view, what key changes should be made to agristability before it is really and truly a better program than the CAIS? What areas should we focus on exactly? That question is for all of you.