Evidence of meeting #18 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 43rd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was producers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Professor and Canadian Canola Growers Chair in Agricultural Policy, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
Yes. As a farmer I would want some program to protect me against price risk, which crop insurance doesn't. Whether that's a form of margin insurance or revenue insurance, I would want to have some sort of price protection.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Slade.
Mr. Perron, could you keep your question fairly short?
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Yes, it will be short so that Mr. Slade would have as much time as possible.
You talked about a series of recommendations, the first of which was to insure the income instead of the margin. Could you quickly tell us what your other recommendations are? I am very interested in that.
Assistant Professor and Canadian Canola Growers Chair in Agricultural Policy, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual
One would be to allow for more private insurance in agriculture. One way of doing that is to change the AgriStability formula. As of now, when you receive payments from a private agricultural insurer, your AgriStability payments are going to be reduced. If we want private insurers to come in and top up AgriStability, then we would need to change that so that the private insurance indemnities that you receive wouldn't reduce what you are receiving from AgriStability. That could be true whether we have an 85% threshold or not.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Slade.
Sorry for the technical issues, but it was a very interesting conversation. I really appreciate that everyone took the time to join us today. That will be the end of the witness part of the meeting. I thank you all.
For the MPs, we have to disconnect and reconnect with the new link in order to proceed with our business portion, which is basically to guide the analysts on the letter we're going to submit to the minister.
I'll suspend the meeting and we'll see you all in 15 minutes.
[Proceedings continue in camera]