Thank you so much.
Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. We certainly appreciate you coming. Obviously, you're the wealth of knowledge that we'll draw from today, and it's important that we hear from you before we begin the hearings.
I'm going to drill down on an issue that I've heard again and again. I may be the exception here because I live in a different region than most in this room. One of the challenges that has continued to dog any program as it relates to a business risk model is the requirement for farmers to have crop insurance. It's obviously a provincially administered program, but it's a concern, insomuch as farmers are limited in their access to a federal program based on the requirement that farmers engage in crop insurance at the provincial level.
The challenge is that there are certain regions of the country where insurance rates simply skyrocket, regions like the Peace, where we have a significant amount of acreage. Farmers find that their rates are so considerably higher than other regions in the province, and for that matter, the rest of the country, that the business case is not there for them to purchase provincially available insurance.
Is this a concern that you've heard? Am I the first one to bring this concern up with you? If so, would there be a feedback mechanism for farmers to give that feedback to the minister as they consider this new program?
I suspect that it's probably a niche concern, but one that has a significant impact in terms of the ability for farmers in my area to engage in what is a federal program based on the requirement to engage in a provincial program.