Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the committee for the invitation to testify here today.
My name is Corlena Patterson. I am the executive director of the Canadian Sheep Federation, representing Canada's sheep farmers and ranchers right across the country.
I want to begin with a central point underpinning what will be our recommendations. They are bold, if not provocative. BRM must protect existing farms from unavoidable shocks, but it must also help build future farms. If it only compensates losses without enabling renewal, it risks becoming a mechanism for managing decline, rather than a pathway to growth.
Canada's current BRM suite plays an important role. Producers need tools to manage income loss, production loss, natural hazards, disasters and cash flow pressure when they face unavoidable shocks beyond their control. We are not suggesting that Canada should step back from supporting existing farms, as an effective BRM program is essential to protecting current production capacity, but the current suite is designed primarily around farms that already exist. It assumes producers have production history, tax-filed margins, accumulated equity, collateral and enough liquidity to participate in matching programs. Those assumptions do not hold for many new entrants, especially those without a farm into which to succeed.
The question for this committee is not only how Canada can protect farms from unavoidable shocks. It should also be how Canada can ensure that BRM also supports renewal, new entry and the productive capacity that we'll need for decades ahead.
The Canadian Sheep Federation is asking the government to modernize BRM around food security, food sovereignty, domestic production capacity and the next generation of Canadian farmers. Food sovereignty matters because Canada should have the capacity to produce more of the food that Canadians consume. Export markets matter, but when public dollars primarily reinforce production systems built around export markets, Canada risks subsidizing food security elsewhere, while leaving gaps in our own domestic food supply. BMR modernization should ensure Canadian dollars also strengthen Canada's ability to feed Canadians.
As a result, our first recommendation is to create a dedicated next-generation and domestic production capacity BRM fund. The fund should have two pathways. One of these would support the people Canada needs to farm. These are new entrants and next-generation producers, including those without inherited land, family assets, established equity or historical production margins. The other should support the production capacity Canada needs to feed itself: sectors where there is a demonstrated domestic supply gap, a risk of losing critical productive capacity or barriers preventing Canadian producers from meeting Canadian demand.
Assuming the next pot of BRM dollars will not grow, we would suggest that this fund be financed by sunsetting the current universal AgriInvest matching model before the next framework begins. Existing balances should be grandfathered and respected, of course, but future public matching dollars should be redirected into this targeted fund for 2028. AgriInvest rewards existing sales and liquidity, and well-capitalized farms generally have access to more financial tools, where new entrants certainly do not.
Our second recommendation is to modernize AgriStability. It remains an important but complex, slow, backward-looking and “difficult to bank on” program. For livestock producers, the whole-farm margin model can mask losses in a specific enterprise. Canada can lose essential breeding animals, replacement stock, forage capacity and regional production momentum, even when a whole-farm margin calculation does not trigger support.
We recommend tiered coverage that responds before a farm is in crisis, provisional reference margins for new entrants, a simplified track for smaller commercial farms, annual statements of coverage, pre-qualified stabilization advances and an enterprise continuity rider for sectors with demonstrated domestic supply gaps. We have submitted in writing more background information with specific recommendations pertaining to AgriStability, as they are lengthy, but they're also targeted.
Our third recommendation is to modernize AgriInsurance, especially for livestock species and production systems that are not well served today. AgriInsurance can support livestock production insurance, but coverage remains uneven and province-specific. Sheep, goats, bison and other livestock species face real production risks that deserve practical, modern insurance tools as well. For sheep producers, risk includes pasture and forage failure, drought-driven feed shortages, predation, disease-related mortality, severe weather impacts, heat stress and loss of flock capacity after a natural environmental shock. We recommend a small ruminant and underserved livestock program, improved forage and pasture coverage, modernized predation coverage and temporary premium support for new entrants.
Lastly, AgriRecovery should be protected for extraordinary disaster response and should not be treated as a funding source for BRM reform. The sheep sector is the practical food-sovereignty example. Canada supplies less than half of the domestic lamb and mutton demand in this country. This is an unmet Canadian demand being filled by imports, and that demand is likely to grow. Supporting new entrants in sheep production is important for replacement, food sovereignty, rural economic development and market-responsive agricultural policy.
With that, I thank you and look forward to your questions.