Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Welcome back, Minister MacAulay. It's good to see you here.
I also want to ask about the AgriRecovery fund.
Specifically, in my province of British Columbia, large parts of the interior have been experiencing drought. In my own region of Vancouver Island and the Cowichan Valley, the price of feed went up. A lot of farmers who were relying on forage crops essentially couldn't water. It caused a lot of trouble throughout my province.
Now, your ministry received a message from the B.C. ministry on July 27. You released a news release on August 21, designating the regions and the different provinces for which you were working on joint AgriRecovery assessments. It wasn't until October 18 that a $219 million announcement came.
Minister, I understand that you have agreements with the provinces with AgriRecovery. I don't want you using provincial governments as a crutch or an excuse.
Given the fact that climate change is a reality, that this is now a feature and not an exception, and these problems are going to get worse, I want to know how you are going to take more of a leadership role in future years to make sure that this program is more nimble and responsive.
When you look at this timeline, you get a message in July and a payment coming out in October. When I'm speaking to farmers, I'm hearing that's not a very fast timeline when they're dealing with that kind of a financial crunch.