It could be Bombardier. One never knows. Actually, those are loan guarantees not subsidies. Let me clarify that right off the bat.
Let us take a look at the family farm. These are some of the things that are facing agriculture right now. Back in the 1940s and the 1950s, when the family farm was transferred to the next generation, it was basically given to that generation and that generation took care of the generation that had retired. We do not see that today. One generation sells it to the next generation.
If we want to get down to this, I would start to question the definition of the family farm. The older generation needs so much money to retire. They look at their farming operations for that retirement money. However, if they attach a $500,000 mortgage to it, they have taken the farm and basically stopped it dead in its tracks because it has to pay for a $500,000 mortgage without any benefit to the efficiency within the farm. That farm now is paying off a $500,000 mortgage. It is stopped dead in its tracks. It cannot update its equipment or anything else like that until it pays off that mortgage. Anything within agriculture today that stands still is falling behind.
I believe we not only have to look at programs of support for the farming industry but we also have to look at how we will put programs in place so we can transfer the capital assets from one generation to the next. That is very incumbent upon agriculture today.
I have been working on my own family operation with just exactly that. I started this type of planning 20 years ago. My son is getting ready to go into the OAC at Guelph next year. He will take agri-economics. He also talking about veterinary science too. I am the third generation on the farm. With the planning that we put in place, there will be a fourth generation.
Someone mentioned the wheat board. I was on the standing committee of agriculture when we looked into this. It was a crown corporation with five commissioners. The reason why there was a government entity was because of the guarantee on the initial payments, which came under the finances act. Everyone of us in the House, and I know the member across the way is constantly talking about finances, has a responsibility to the taxpayers of Canada. So when we came up with the new wheat board, it had 15 members on it. It still had the five commissioners of the crown corporation but we now had 10 elected farmers on that board. Now we have the feedback of the grassroots into the CWB.
The more they get involved within the CWB, and I have had a chance to talk to some of these directors, the more supportive they are of the way the Canada Wheat Board is run. However, they are elected and have connections to the grassroots. Everyone in the House knows that if we do not do what our constituents think is the right, come election time we will not be back. That is the reality. So now there is a commitment of the grassroots to the Canada Wheat Board. Therefore, members can see just how complicated this issue is.