Agriculture committee  I'd like to respond, if you don't mind, James. I look at them and I have a problem when we use the word “pillars”. And we have “silos”, or we have.... I know it's a way of focusing the issues, but I'm afraid that we get into those “pillars” and we stay there, so everybody who's in that box is in that box and not looking at the one beside him.

Agriculture committee  Communication is always an issue. You can be very good at it, or you can put your head in the sand and ignore it. I agree with the basis of what you're saying. We need to have discussion. If we ignore the discussion, then we all suffer. So it's about having a venue and an avenue to have those discussions.

Agriculture committee  First, I'd like to start off with whether it is time for one political party in this country.

Agriculture committee  Philosophically we're a little different, but I think the point you raised is that there should be better communication in discussing this. I was quite surprised when the 15% came up fairly rapidly. There wasn't a lot of discussion. We never heard the minister's side asking us what we thought about it.

Agriculture committee  I think absolutely, given that canola and biodiesel is bigger in Canada. We have the product to do it, and the world is demanding biodiesel from canola, so I think it's going to have the biggest impact on us. Whether it takes three or four years for the world to start depressing prices—right now there's a very big growth in it—or when it comes and when it starts to level off, I'm not sure.

Agriculture committee  In your first comment, Wayne, on meeting the subsidies of the United States or Europe or whatever it is, certainly I sense your frustration, and you would sense it with every farmer, that Canada is being the boy scout. With every government I can remember, that's more or less what we've been.

Agriculture committee  Great, Larry. One question that I have noted down is you want to know about crop insurance as a mandatory feature. Is the NISA top-up the recent option you're talking about?

Agriculture committee  Those two, okay. On crop insurance as a mandatory feature, we talked in my presentation about having flexibility on every farm. When I sit down in the spring, I have my crop insurance options before me. They have three prices and three price levels, and every one has a different level of premium.

Agriculture committee  By nature, farmers are often mystic people. Absolutely. We assume a lot of risk, but we go out there every spring with optimism. As far as how we compete with the United States and Europe, we know that's a problem. But if we look to the next few years with the biofuels industry coming onside, we've already seen what that has done as far as driving the prices.

Agriculture committee  Yes, he's still up there.

Agriculture committee  I'm just trying to think of what kind of insurance, what kind of private industry, or even a producer group, would have the backstop for that kind of risk, because it's all about managing your risk. I mean, whoever did it would still have to go out and re-insure on the international market for that risk.

Agriculture committee  I just don't have a vision of what the other option could be. I guess if I saw something presented, I'd be willing to look at it. On the national program, because it is a national issue for a lot of crops, how can we step back from that?

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, members of the House of Commons standing committee. Welcome to British Columbia. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on the next generation of agricultural policy framework and, more specifically, the business risk management pillar, and to provide a couple of comments on the science and innovation pillar.