Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the 18th meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
We will spend the first hour of the meeting on our business risk management program study, and we'll spend the second hour in camera considering the draft letter prepared by the committee's analysts.
I would like to outline a few rules to follow. Most of you have heard them before, but I think it's important to repeat them.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. When you intervene, please make sure that your language channel is set to the language that you intend to speak, not to the floor channel. This is very important. It will reduce the number of times we need to stop because the interpretation is inaudible for our participants. It will also maximize the amount of time we spend exchanging with each other.
I believe that all of our witnesses understand that. If you could just give me a good nod that you know how it works.... Thank you.
Also, before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you're ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. That's at the bottom left-hand side of your screen.
Make sure that your microphone is off when you are not talking.
We are now ready to begin.
I want to welcome today's witnesses.
We are hearing from Léopold Bourgeois, from the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick. He is the president of the New Brunswick Agricultural Insurance Commission.
We also have Peter Slade appearing as an individual.
He is an assistant professor and the Canadian Canola Growers chair in agricultural policy at the University of Saskatchewan.
We also have Ms. Erin Gowriluk, executive director of Grain Growers of Canada, and Andre Harpe, director.
With that, we will start with opening statements of up to seven minutes each.
Mr. Bourgeois, you have seven minutes to make your presentation.