Mr. Speaker, I am amazed that the member for Malpeque said that our meetings are those of exclusion, but he was there. We have higher standards than that. I am not sure how he snuck in. I guess anything is possible in Wayne's world.
We did not see a lot of help from the members opposite when we were talking about scrapping CAIS. We have had instances where we have been happy to see them sit on their hands so that we can stand up for agricultural producers and I know they will continue to do that. It is great that they, rather than producers, are taking it on the chin and I love to see that.
The member opposite talked about our scrapping CAIS. Yes, we campaigned on that and we gained a lot of credibility because we wanted to get rid of it. It was seen as a situation where the producers could never see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have done that. We have adjusted reference margins. The member opposite knows that. This is a brand new program. It is a new day. We are starting over. We have made changes to negative margins so that we can flow cash to people who are in trouble. We have adjusted inventory values as they go along on a case by case basis.
I am more than happy to deliver what the sector needs, within reasonable parameters. We cannot open the floodgates because then we start looking at countervailable situations, and industry does not want that.
As I said before, producers do not want to farm the mailbox. They want a decent return from the marketplace. They do not want to see government programs that restrict their ability to read market signals.
We have taken all that into consideration. We have changed agri-stability, the old CAIS reference margin situation. We have a top tier that the government kicked off with $600 million. We will continue to top that up with an extra $100 million over the life of the program. If there are changes that need to be made, we have a deal with the provinces that we will look at, adjust and re-evaluate as the program moves along to make sure that it does what we said it was going to do.
We have to stay within cost-cutting parameters. This is a cost shared jurisdiction with the provinces, 60% federal, 40% provincial. The only change to that is on the agri-recovery side, on the disaster component. As the disaster grows, so does the federal component of money and that is the right thing to do. We are not going to shortchange anyone because it ends up at the farm gate with less returns. We have made those changes.
The member opposite said he would like to change the caps. Why did he sit on them in CAIS for all those years when that was one of the problems? We are happy to change the caps. We have actually expanded those. We are happy to see them double. That is the message I am taking to the provinces when I meet them at the end of May in our next face to face meeting.
We have gone back into programs that have been around. We have gone into new programs. We are not scared to take a step back and ask if there is a better way to do this.
Many times what is designed here in the Ottawa bubble does not quite hit the target out there. That is one of the things that drove me into this place. It was that disconnect between what is happening in the real world and what happens here.
The Liberals want to maintain this idea of a bubble here in Ottawa, that bureaucrats can design a program. We will never do that. We will use the bureaucrats to facilitate a farmer directed initiative and make it work for them.