When referring to the difficulty young people have in starting in agriculture, we use some statistics: in the last 10 years we have lost 62% of our young farmers, and the present average age of farmers is about 57. We are virtually a dying breed. Part of it is that I'm a relatively young person and am a retired farmer because the future wasn't there for us. We were good at what we did, but the future wasn't there.
If we look at EI and at the job of farming and recognize that we need to have positive returns—and protection as well, because it's a vital service—then including farming in EI programming makes a lot of sense and might entice other folks to accept some of the risks that come along with farming, because then they would have security along with them. Maybe those are the major recommendations.
I'm a very principles-based person. I see that we need to make the program accessible. It's there to help people, to get them restarted. Basically, whether it's making the number of hours worked to be eligible the important thing or whether it is deciding that self-employed people need to be eligible, all in all I think we need to make it work for Canadians. We need to get Canadians back to work. We need to understand the economic climate and also encourage folks to start over. I think that's going to be a reality in the next number of years. It's not just on the farm but in the rural community as well that people need support to start over.