There's been a steady evolution of these types of safety-net programs and income stabilization programs dating back to the seventies. The program that the previous Liberal government had was very helpful. There's no program that's going to keep a farmer in business forever if the farmer's doing a poor job or if the environment isn't co-operating. However, the previous program was pretty decent, and our farm participated in that program. If we had years of good crops and good sales, we could build up a reference margin. Then in the future, if our income dropped below a certain level, there would be a trigger, and there would be a payment. The program was large enough that it could keep a farmer who had 10 years of good crops in business for two or three years if things really went badly.
What happened with the previous government was that, for whatever reason, they decided to undermine that program. It resulted in thousands of farmers withdrawing completely from the program, because the triggers were changed so much, the reference margins were made redundant. There just wasn't the available assistance there that was required.
In our own case, our farm dropped out of the agri-stability program because my analysis and the analysis of Meyers Norris Penny, our accountant, said as long as your farm stays in the crop insurance program, you will never receive a payment from agri-stability. Therefore, there's no point in continuing to pay into that program.