Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Wiersema, for being back here, which is being talked about as being maybe your last official duty as interim Auditor General, and thank you.
I'd like to go to chapter 3 because I want to get an understanding of your comments in talking about the farmers: that the agriculture industry can wait up to two years for a payment and that the amount of the payment is hard to project.
On the amount of payment I agree. Unfortunately, we got tied in with a past program that makes that understanding of bankable very difficult.
But the two years.... I'm being told by my producers that I think some of that problem comes with farm businesses, corporations, that have off-calendar year-ends. So if they end up in March...they actually can end up about a year and three months behind just because they've been off the calendar year-end.
I've talked with the federal Minister of Agriculture. In Ontario, it is run by Agricorp, through which those funds are funnelled. My understanding also is that there are some problems with the systems of Agricorp in being able to deal with the numbers. Ontario is one of the largest in terms of agricultural producers out there and across Canada.
Can you help explain to me what that actually means? I know we have to wait for CRA to get the information back. I do know that we actually put out 50% ahead, which helps; that's on an estimate in terms of what they may be getting and that has to be documented. But I'm wondering where does.... Because it's not just federal. I'm wondering if you could help us understand the complexity of it and why you think there's maybe a delay of two years.