Mr. Speaker, the government seems to delight in tormenting agricultural producers. Farmers had a program called NISA that was working for most of them, so the Liberals gutted it. They replaced it with CAIS, a program that has been wrapped in controversy right from the beginning. It is just not working for most producers.
Let me give an example. The government had a September 30 deadline for 2004 CAIS applications. It actually wanted farmers to get off the combine at harvest time and go home to do book work.
Today, under pressure from Conservative members, producers and accountants, the government has finally extended the deadline until farmers get out of the fields and are able to do their book work.
That is not enough to fix the program. Producers are still waiting for 2003 payments and some have been told it will be months. Others cannot qualify for payments, and more and more questions are being asked about the structure of the entire program. As one farm economist told me, this program is “a subsidy for the chronically profitable”.
This government has no effective plan for agriculture. It really is time for a change.