Thank you for inviting me.
This is a new process for me. I'm a tree fruit grower from the Okanagan in B.C. Contrary to my winter look for pruning, I'm a young farmer.
The issue I have with the programs in place now is that the young, expanding, and diversifying farms are quite often the ones left out. This is a process that needs to be dealt with if the programs are going to work going forward into the future. Those are the sectors that will keep the Canadian agricultural scene alive.
I would ask that the committee look into ways to change the programs in such a way that those sectors--the expanding farms, the young farmers, and the diversifying farms--are taken into account.
In the tree fruit industry in the Okanagan we have a fair number of new entrants. Our population of existing farmers is quite old. We've seen in the last five years that those declining farms are the ones that trigger the support payments, not the new and expanding ones, even though they're subject to the same market conditions and declines. I know there'll be a lot of other issues with those programs, but those are the ones that are important to us.
That's it. I don't have a formal presentation. I was just invited at the end of last week. If there are questions, I'll certainly fill in the blanks.