Agriculture committee  It's $750,000.

Agriculture committee  I'd say no.

Agriculture committee  What I would suggest is that we need two programs: a good crop insurance program and a NISA-style program, and that's it. An example is, in 2002 I could get $116 of coverage for $6. In 2005 I got $87 of coverage for $8.30. So the premiums are increasing substantially and the cove

Agriculture committee  I'll speak personally about my farm. You want to talk about a deposit or a fee. I sent a deposit in for CAIS. That has cost our farm thousands. Our accounting bill in the last three years is approaching over $10,000, and I've not seen one cent from the program. That's how this

Agriculture committee  The benefit to the farmer, really quickly, with research.... We have good examples. We have winter wheat varieties sitting on the shelf in Lethbridge that will produce over 100 bushels an acre. They are not allowed, through KVD, because once out of three years it looks like a har

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry if that's how it came across. What I meant to say is that farmers want less reliance on government; we would like to make our income from the marketplace. It's very tough, because we have trading competitors in the European Union and the U.S., where they are subsidize

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, everyone. The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association welcomes this opportunity to appear before you to present our views on business risk management. My name is Stephen Vandervalk, and I am the Alberta vice-president of the Wheat Growers. I'm a fourth-genera

Agriculture committee  Yes, everybody should have a vote. I just cannot get past the fact that you cannot have the majority impose their will on the minority. It's that simple. It doesn't matter if you have a vote. How did we advance as a society through the last hundred years if the majority just vote

Agriculture committee  Referring to the question on changing too rapidly and losing all that we've gained, the WCE, the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, already has mechanisms in place for price discovery if dual marketing ever comes into play. The market is already ready for the dual marketing to come in

Agriculture committee  Well, what we advocate is that you have to choose how much wheat you put into the pool beforehand, so that they know exactly how much they have to sell, what quality and what timeframes. In any other commodity, if you hold your canola, oats, or whatever, over a certain timeframe

Agriculture committee  So I'll leave it.

Agriculture committee  The first question was on multinationals. My first question on multinationals is this. Is this a swear word? Is it such a bad thing that the multinationals are coming and buying our grain? The Australian Wheat Board lost their export monopoly and the next day the barley price j

Agriculture committee  I think the malt is a really good example, because if you have a maltster next to you, say 50 or 100 miles away, it might cost you $8 or $10 a tonne to haul it there. If you sell it to the Wheat Board you have to bring it to the elevator, pay elevation, pay the freight to Vancouv

Agriculture committee  I guess when it comes down to western Canadian farmers with agriculture, it's wheat and barley. It's the only commodity, or any type of business in the country, or in fact most of the world, where you don't have the choice. You own your own land, you own the inputs, you own every

Agriculture committee  We don't have a majority group taking rights away from a minority group. I feel that whether the vote is 70% in favour of dual marketing or 20% in favour of dual marketing, really at the end of the day it does not matter, because that 20% should still have the right to market the