Thank you for the question. It is very succinct.
I think there are some very simple things that need to be changed with the program, especially from the hog industry point of view. The three-year negative margin rule has got to go. It's got to go tomorrow. Today would be even better.
In our industry, for the factors you all know, most farmers have been in negative margins for five years. There will be no payouts, or very limited payouts, so that rule has to go.
On lengthening the average out to ten years--the Olympic average, or going to a simple ten-year average--as we've watched these programs grow and evolve, I believe that would be a more realistic way of predicting where average margins are. We watch the grain markets, and it's a longer cycle than in the hog industry, unless there's a real issue somewhere in the world.
Base them on COP. I think that's a good way of doing this. We live in a technological world; all the numbers we need to do this are in the system today. It's a matter of somebody putting the money forward to build the programs to make that happen.
The other big issue we have is response time. When we are almost at the end of 2010, waiting for a 2008 return is plainly unacceptable. I'm amazed that the Auditor General hasn't picked up on that and slapped the government of the day. You can change that. Response times can be changed by using technology. The challenge is that technology costs money to put in place, and unfortunately, agriculture technology doesn't rank high on any government's list of things to put money into, whether it be provincial or federal.