Thank you.
I really do appreciate, as my colleague has said, your taking the time to come and be part of this forum as witnesses.
I've been listening when we talk about the former programs—Brian, you talked about the Tripartite—and I can never get away from my colleagues across the table who keep criticizing our government for not fixing something that they created.
Two members over there have “honourable” in front of their names, meaning they sat at the cabinet table and allowed the change from NISA to go to a margin-based program.
We have to understand that NISA would have still been here. It didn't have to go. Politically, somebody made a decision to get rid of it to save money, rather than fixing it.
I totally agree that AgriStability is not fair. It doesn't pay out in a fair manner across the country. But under the policy that came forward with it...unilateral decisions by the federal government are not there anymore. The province has its say in it.
Mr. Mutch, I know you said P.E.I. is a have-not province. Actually, Ontario was the top province and is now at the bottom. They make priorities. When you talk to my colleagues across the way from Quebec, you will find that their province actually makes a priority choice on agriculture because we've now increased the transfers to the provinces by 25%. They make choices in which dollars are made out.
Mr. Mutch, just to tip away from that, you talked about the advance payment program being very good. Then you sort of went away and said it's really not going to work because you can't get it paid back. I understand those concerns. We're seven months away from the deadline. Do you see your organizations making another plea at that time, with good background on that, if there's an extension needed?
Secondly, those agreements were signed by people. Was it the intention, do you think, that some of them would not ever be able to pay away? You talked about how the cattle are likely sometimes gone, so I'm wondering how they expect to pay that back.
Next I would like to go to Brian.
Thank you again, Brian. When we were up visiting in your area earlier on, we talked about tornadoes. I can tell you, when I was growing up I learned what it is like to have straw sticking in the wall after your barn has partly disappeared. That's the force that tornadoes have. We had that in our house. The consistent thing is that when we walked shoulder to shoulder with our neighbours and everybody else, it was the Mennonites who came in and walked with us to help clean up.
There was a farm about a mile away, which I ended up buying. About half of it ended up at our place, including the house and the barn. The ferocity of those tornadoes is incredible.
The problems with AgriStability in terms of years, working with the provinces—what sort of reaction have you had from the provinces in terms of being able to make the changes, the Olympic changes, to extend it out if it needs to be longer than the five years, taking the three best of it? How are those discussions going?
I wonder if you could talk about that, and then Mr. Mutch, if you could answer those other two....