Agriculture committee  In the course of the last six years, Mr. Chairman, we've--

Agriculture committee  --undertaken a pretty significant initiative to finance the accounts receivable that independent dealers who supply inputs--

Agriculture committee  We're doing it through individual credit facilities through to the producer who would require it.

Agriculture committee  What we are comfortable doing is working in an industry that we know has a large political aspect to it. Whether you are lending in the U.S. or Canada or the U.K. or Australia or wherever, you have various levels of involvement of government that will result in payments being made to producers.

Agriculture committee  Brian, you'll probably have a word on this too. I'm going to some research that the George Morris Centre in Guelph has done. My cut on this is that they find it easier to find sound economic factors that would let us show really good, strong growth in the biofuels sector if we were looking at biodiesel—easier than with ethanol, largely because ethanol requires a really strong support program, has done over the course of time, and has it in the U.S., and if we want to have an industry like it here, we'll probably have to do something in the way of matching that, if we choose to play.

Agriculture committee  I'll see if I can take a run at that, because I've taken several runs at that. I'd like to refer, perhaps, to CAIS. We have situations in our respective banks at this point in time in which we're still waiting for payments, and not just for the last year, but in some cases for the year before.

Agriculture committee  I believe it can come close. It may not be exact, but even in a crop insurance program it may not be exact, because you always have dates and times when you add acreage. You subtract acreage and that sort of thing. So you've always got a range, but at least it would get us very close.

Agriculture committee  I don't believe it is a paradox. I think the situation is that when we're talking about the net income being negative, most of the time we're talking about that before the level of payments come in. When we talk about an agricultural industry, we know that around the globe, agriculture is an industry that has political support at all levels.

Agriculture committee  Let me take a cut at responding to that.

Agriculture committee  No, because what you're suggesting is already out there. It is broadly available through all the financial institutions that are members of the CBA. Everybody has flexibility in their products. Basically when they work with clients, they establish repayment schedules over a specified period of time.

Agriculture committee  I'll take the first run at that. I think the opportunity for businesses to do well is the best when the marketplace is the best. If you know the revenues you can get when you have a viable level of revenue that you can extract from the sale of a certain type of product, if you know what the costs of production are going to be, and if those factors can be managed in the context of a market that is mature and stable, it is the ideal world.

Agriculture committee  If I might add something to that, with the changes that both Quebec and Ontario have made relative to quotas and how quotas will be priced going forward, I think that's one of the issues you raised as a concern. What we have done over the course of time is to lend on relatively conservative ratios.

Agriculture committee  The follow-on I would make is that the situation around the CAIS was a little different. I think there were some natural circumstances that caused the differences. One is that it was introduced fairly quickly, and introduced at a time when a decision had been made to go in a fairly linear approach with support programs, and to try to avoid having multiple programs in operation.