Mr. Speaker, as a party policy we believe in producer participation in whole farm insurance. The difference here is that the CAIS program is being used to deliver disaster assistance. We firmly believe that disaster assistance is the sole responsibility of the government. If the disaster assistance that is currently being delivered through CAIS was taken out and delivered in a more effective manner, we could go back and look at producer participation and sharing in the whole farm risk management program.
I do not have a problem with that principle, but the program has gone through a metamorphosis. It has gone from being whole farm into disaster assistance. It is trying to do too much. That is why we are starting to see the wheels fall off it. It is time to look at making some changes. The Olympic five year average is something that we hear a lot of problems about. Maybe we need to look at a longer term. A 10 year rolling average would probably be more effective for producers. It is one which would recognize that there would be some bad years but there would be good years which we need to recognize too. In Olympic averaging that does not happen.
Let us balance it better. Let us take it over a longer term to be more reflective and more realistic of the big picture in agriculture. Let us take the disaster part out and deliver that more specifically to the commodities that need it on a per unit basis. Let us make government responsible for those things that happen outside the norm.