Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The comments I will make today are general and concern eastern Canada.
I would first like to say that, although we currently live in a somewhat poor province, New Brunswick, we are Canadians first. As farmers, we compete on the same markets—either domestic or international—as producers from other provinces.
All producers in New Brunswick are currently dissatisfied with the farm income programs. That has actually been the case for two or three years. I will talk about it more and in further detail. The coverage provided by the AgriInsurance program has decreased because of a few bad years, and primes have gone up. So the program's contribution has dropped a lot.
In New Brunswick, 80% of potato producers, for example, were participating in the program. However, in 2019, only 48% of producers participated in it. The same goes for other insurable commodities such as strawberries, apples, wild blueberries, and so on.
The participation rate has decreased owing to the conditions we have been facing over the past few years. For a few years, we have been trying everything. Even now, we are trying to improve our plans.
The federal framework we operate within is very restrictive. If New Brunswick gave us more funding, we could do more. But New Brunswick does not have the budget needed at this time.
About a year ago, Nova Scotia invested $4 million to prevent potato producers' primes from going up after two very difficult years—there was the freezing weather in 2018 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
Producers in New Brunswick are not satisfied with the AgriStability program, as the margin has to drop below 70%. What is more, no one is satisfied with the AgriInvestment program, as 1% is too low.
The AgriRecovery program has been worse in New Brunswick. As the province has been unable to pay its 40% share, producers have ended up losing everything. In addition, they have received no assistance in this area, especially potato producers. Bordering provinces have received assistance to the tune of 100%. Our producers are not very happy, especially since some of them have had to pay an accountant between $3,000 and $4,000 to prepare the requests. They have received no money through the program.
In 2019, members of the New Brunswick Agricultural Insurance Commission, which I preside over, even thought about not offering the crop insurance program in New Brunswick because they did not think that program was good enough for our producers. The program was ultimately made available, but there was some reticence.
This year, a few changes have been made, but we still don't know what the participation rate is. In a month or two, we will have a better idea of the number of people who think that the changes are good ones.
We are open to anything, or nearly anything. We are wondering what would need to be done and whether a single program would not be preferable to four that the producers do not like. The management of all those programs is expensive. It does not benefit producers.
We feel that an open mind must be kept and new possibilities must be examined. We also talked about a number of solutions, such as improvements made to the AgriInvestment program and support for new farmers and those who have run out of money. The AgriStability program could also be provided with more flexibility.
On its own, AgriInsurance does not protect from years of low price commodities, and it is insufficient. We have even discussed the possibility of connecting everything to our tax refunds.
In any case, we want a simpler program that may offer less choice, but that would be easier to understand for producers, as that would in turn enable them to predict what it will bring them and would be easier to manage.
Those are only a few ideas, but we feel that change is needed and would be preferable to the status quo.
Thank you.