Mr. Speaker, farmers are hard-working people who, by the very nature of their profession, need to plan ahead.
As farmers plan for the future today, they have more reason for optimism than they have had for a very long time.
The security of our farm families is a concern of the government. We are acting to respond to the challenges of today while we work to ensure long term stability.
We are moving forward to replace CAIS with a program that separates disaster relief from income stabilization, but in the meantime we are making the program simpler and more responsive to the needs of our farmers.
In the budget we tripled our original commitment and are investing an additional $1.5 billion in our agriculture producers this year.
The government is working with our producers to build a road map of our agricultural future to help provide the security that our farm families deserve.
The planning and hard work of the government gives our farmers plenty of reasons to be encouraged.