Madam Chairman, I listened with a lot of interest to what the member for Yorkton--Melville had to say. The rural caucus on the government side lobbied hard to get a task force put together to look at the foreseeable future of agriculture, and the Prime Minister agreed. Members of the task force have been going out across Canada. In the first two weeks of September we were on the east coast working our way in, and we have been out west. In fact, part of the task force right now is in B.C. Some of the issues that the member across the way talked about are exactly what we have heard.
What I would like to talk about right now is the fact that we have a number of programs. We have CFIP, which is a Canadian income program, NISA, crop insurance. Quebec has ASRA. There is MRI or GRIP. These programs were brought in years back.
Let us deal with crop insurance, for instance. It was brought in in the mid-sixties. I am not driving a mid-sixties car yet agriculture is dealing with a mid-sixties program.
I happen to be in supply management. It is one sector of agriculture that currently does not cost the Government of Canada.
I see the member from Selkirk--Interlake kind of smiling over there. He was wondering when I would talk about chicken farming. It is fairly early in my speech.
The point that I am making is that there are some programs within Canadian agriculture right now that are in fact working. There are other programs that are in place that were designed years back and quite frankly they have to be updated, such as crop insurance.
When I insure my poultry barns, I insure each of them for fire insurance. If one barn burns, down I do not take the average of all the barns and that is what I am paid. That specific barn is insured. That is one thing that needs to be updated within crop insurance.
Another aspect is I believe that the input costs that go into it have to be insured. In essence, there could be a cost of production formula incorporated within crop insurance. This is what we have heard as we have moved across the country.
A cost of production formula is something that we deal with in the poultry industry. It works this way. We take the average of the input costs from the best and the poorest growers so that it is in the centre. It is great for the best grower because his input costs are a lot lower than what the average is so he is doing very well. However, the costs for the poorest grower are obviously a lot higher than what the average is and he is not doing as well. That is what we have done in the poultry industry to breed efficiency within the system and to get rid of inefficiency.
That is one of the things we have to still take a look at within the crop insurance program, if in fact we head toward the issue of a cost of production formula.
The member for Yorkton--Melville also talked about CFIP, the son of AIDA. I agree with him. However, it was brought in under an agreement between the federal and provincial governments and different farming organizations in 1998 to deal with the pork industry. Quite frankly, this is a program that needs a lot of rejigging if it is going to be a broad based paintbrush covering all commodities.
What I am saying is that we have programs in place that we have to analyze to see whether these they are good enough to be updated and kept in place to carry on to the next generation or whether they should be thrown out and a new program brought in to deal with the new issues that are facing agriculture.
I know my colleagues across the way will agree with this. Of the population of Canada, currently 2% is involved in agriculture. Of that, half of 1% produces 80% of the food and the other 1.5% produces 20%. Those are the statistics.
The next generation right now, if looks at the family farm, whatever that is, and will to go into that in a second, and the fact that their parents are not making, then why the heck would they want to go into it. Now we are into a philosophical debate. I am always convinced that somebody will be growing the food on the land. However, who will it be? Will it be somebody running the family farm or will it be a corporate entity?