I think probably the number one lesson is that we need to communicate better in terms of what the AgriRecovery program is about and what it's intended to do. The two initiatives you mentioned were done under the AgriRecovery program, which is a disaster framework. AgriRecovery is there not to provide assistance for lost income due to disasters, but to help producers move forward: what do they need to do to resume business operations or take actions to mitigate the impacts of the disaster?
In the case you mentioned, the pasture recovery initiative, which was a $117-million federal-provincial initiative in Alberta and Saskatchewan, was about helping producers face the challenges they were going to incur this past spring, with their pastures being in poor shape because of last year's drought. We were giving producers assistance to help them with the feed costs so they could keep their cattle off the pastures till they could recover. It was very forward-looking.
That's why the assistance came out in the spring, even though what caused the need for that assistance was what had happened the previous year. So the timeliness was there. Basically, they needed the money in the spring to deal with their extraordinary feed costs, because they shouldn't be putting those cattle on pastures and further damaging the pastures.
Similarly with the flood, the whole idea was to get the assistance out early so producers could take the necessary steps over the summer to rehabilitate the flooded cropland. This would allow them to be in a position to reseed next spring. It's very forward-looking.
But at the end of the day, one of the key things is that we have to do a better job of communicating what this program is intended to do.