Mr. Chair, honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.
My name is William Van Tassel. I'm president of the Ontario-Quebec Grain Farmers' Coalition. I am joined by Leo Guilbeault. He is my Ontario counterpart. He is chair of the Ontario grains and oilseeds committee.
In 2007 we joined forces to address some the market challenges that we face. The Ontario-Quebec Grains and Oilseeds Farmers’ Coalition represents 41,000 Ontario and Quebec farmers from one end of the province to the other end of Quebec. Our members produce every kind of grain you can think of that's growing out here, and we represent the backbone of rural communities throughout Ontario and Quebec. Our work is to feed Canadian cities--more than that, to feed the world.
I am here today to address some of the challenges that eastern Canadian grain farmers face. In particular, I am here to ask the committee to consider a new approach to agricultural business risk management.
As farmers, there are some elements of risk that we cannot control, such as the BSE crisis—mad cow—or the recent flooding out in the prairie provinces. These risks are partially managed through the current crop insurance programs. But these programs cannot help us manage the chaos and volatility of market prices, constantly distorted by international agricultural subsidies and international currency fluctuations.
As a result of these global economic pressures, eastern family farms have struggled in recent years to keep their businesses healthy and sustainable in the long term. Year over year, we suffer from a lack of certainty and reliability: we do not know what price we will get for our crops from year to year. But we have a solution that we believe can bring some reliability and certainty--as much as possible anyways--back into farming in eastern Canada.