Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's intervention. I think it is important, as we talk about the macro issues, that she take an opportunity in the House to talk about some of it in terms of real producers.
Since taking over the ministry back in July and being in my job for seven months, I have had the opportunity on six separate occasions to travel to her province to do just what she is asking me to do, and that is to deal with individual producers. I had an opportunity, shortly after August 20, to go south of Regina to visit with producers in their fields and see the crops and devastation that the frost had wrought on them. It was heartbreaking. After a number of years of drought and other difficulties, to have in their grasp as the summer went along what would appear to have been a bumper crop grabbed away in one night of frost was devastating. It was a heart-rending thing to see.
I am glad the hon. member mentioned production insurance. It is part of business risk management. It is jointly funded by the federal-provincial government and the producers. It is an important part of business risk management. I am pleased to see the hon. member mention the importance of that.
In our discussions today in respect of CAIS, I have made a couple of points. First, we have been on an ongoing basis, working with the province and with producers, trying to put additional component parts to it and improvements in it, things like adding negative margins, increasing the cap and changing the deposit requirements. We agree that we need to do additional ones.
In addition to that, we have also made the point about the importance of understanding that there is real help flowing to producers. We have seen over 15,000 producers in Saskatchewan receive payments of some $236 million, and that is in respect to the 2003 CAIS program. That is not to say that the issues and the concerns raised by the individuals she spoke to are not important enough to put forward.
I would like to ask her the question because she has provided a number of examples about CAIS. In addition to the deposit issue which we have on the table today, are there other specific changes that she would like to see contemplated as the review of the CAIS moves forward?