I've co-opted Andrew's time. The fact that he works for me makes that easy.
I'll be brief though, and I'll give you an example. Our response to COOL, country of origin labelling, which was a very long and dragged out effort to reopen borders for red meat in the U.S., was a very well-aligned strategy between federal and provincial governments culminating in a successful outcome. It's an outcome that I don't think would have been as easy to achieve without the alignment that governments have learned to introduce.
I'll briefly go over what constitutes an agricultural policy framework.
It's first and foremost a set of programs that align and point in the same direction. The federal government administers a number of those programs to the tune of about $1 billion over five years. Our provincial colleagues administer programs that are worth about $2 billion over five years. The federal government contributes 60¢ for every one of those two billion dollars. That helps with the cohesiveness of the framework. Last, governments have agreed to jointly administer a number of business risk management programs, which in the main provide direct income support to producers under conditions whereby either their productive capacity is threatened in a disaster situation or there are significant market returns that collapse.
Let me quickly go over the main milestones that we foresee coming.
In July, ministers will be getting together to talk about the framework and will produce, we hope, a common vision in the form of a policy statement going forward. That policy statement will signal to the sector where governments think the priorities should lie, and will signal also areas where governments are very interested in getting engagement and feedback.
Over the course of the next year, after July, we'll see some significant level of engagement and consultation with the sector. We've already begun to do that. Last week Minister MacAulay launched our first national engagement session with about 75 producer organizations and other organizations interested in the next policy framework. Prior to that, officials have met about 150 organizations in getting ready for the next phase of engagement. By July 2017 we should have a multilateral framework in place. That's the direction that will set both the budget—the amount of money committed to the sector—and the division of that budget among policy areas going forward for the next framework.
I won't get into the business risk management programs because of the time, but I know there will be a number of questions about those. We're more than happy to address them. That is all to say, though, that there were some significant changes in Growing Forward 2, but despite those changes, these programs have paid out about $4 billion since 2013.
It's also in my minister's mandate letter to ensure that those programs are working on behalf of producers. In that endeavour, he's going to be joined by his provincial colleagues, who agreed at the outset of Growing Forward 2 to have a mid-term check-up on business risk management programs to ensure that the programs continue to work.
So far we're hearing a few things from the sector, Mr. Chair. One, the emphasis on innovation, research, and development continues to be a priority, as do trade and market access. Market access is critically important as we see more countries resorting to different types of technical or other barriers to trade. Having a trade agreement in place is important, but making sure that you can actually access the provisions of that market agreement is equally important.
Some emerging areas that align with this government's priorities include a greater emphasis on climate change and climate change adaptation as well as mitigation for the sector; a renewed emphasis on food processing, because of the importance of the food processing sector with regard to employment in the country; and an important effort to ensure that research and development dollars are set in a series of priorities where the best value for every research and development dollar is extracted.
Mr. Chair, in the interest of time, I'll wind up there.
Mr. Goldstein and I are happy to answer questions for as long as you'll have us.