Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for taking the time to be here today and for giving us your insight on the ground about why some of these programs may or may not be working.
I'll go first to Chris. I know you talked about it a bit in depth. We changed the AgriRecovery program from 85% to 70%. I think the landscape for agriculture was very different at that point. We made that change because the program had become almost a source of profit for some producers, rather than stability, which is what the program was intended for. At that time, we did not have the trade disruptions we have now. We did not have a carbon tax. We had reliable transportation to get our commodities to market, for the most part.
Chris, I don't want to say “demand”, but was a lot of that ask to get back to 85% precipitated by the change in the landscape that agriculture is facing right now? Certainly we have seen that in the last six months alone with a very difficult harvest, the CN strike, the illegal blockades and a carbon tax. When you add all of those things onto agriculture, one can certainly see why the need to revisit AgriStability is so imperative.
Is that change in landscape a big reason this has become such a priority for the CFA?