Agriculture committee  I had the privilege of sitting in on several first-round consultations on the APF. A common theme that ran through those consultations, clear across our region in the east, was that the lack of a long-term vision was hindering progress in reaching our goal of returning some kind

Agriculture committee  I would like to echo what Bob started out with. In your vision, you include profitability for all partners in the value chain. I think the farmer and producer is definitely very important and sometimes a forgotten partner in that value chain. You ended up by saying “for the bene

Agriculture committee  I would definitely agree that we need to be prepared for the disaster. If avian influenza hits Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, central Ontario, or wherever, a lot of those producers don't have the time to wait, even if they are covered under CAIS, production insurance, or whatever. T

Agriculture committee  I have two or three points. I probably don't have the history that some of you around the table do, but I agree that what we're doing is not working. That's what some of us alluded to when we said we need a vision of where we want to go and how to get there. It would be great to

Agriculture committee  Certainly for years it was preached to us that bigger was better, and I think in some cases now we're finding out that's not necessarily so. There are some of these mid-sized and even smaller-sized family farms that are a lot more able and better equipped to deal with the farm cr

Agriculture committee  If I were the minister, I would take a serious look at some of the other ways besides direct subsidies by which we could help to level the playing field; that is, regulatory reform and a policy environment where the farmers actually stand a chance. Our competitors to the south

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure they're as readily available or as readily used as they are in the west, but if those are tools we can add to our toolbox, we certainly need to take a look at them.

Agriculture committee  What you're asking for is more consultation?

Agriculture committee  I have a quick comment. I think some of the sentiment you've heard about in the last couple of days here in the east is that producers would much rather be able to extract their sustainable profit from the marketplace rather than relying on risk management programs to add to th

Agriculture committee  I think that most farmers who've managed to survive this long are pretty good managers for the most part, given the crisis that we're in. I guess the concept of a self-assessment would be to follow in the model of the environmental farm plan, where you do a self-assessment of yo

Agriculture committee  If we could use a couple of very good examples, the BSE crisis in Canada and the avian influenza that struck B.C., the only way to compensate a lot of producers was through the current BRM funding. Those very crisis-specific and regional issues—well, BSE wasn't regional—are very

Agriculture committee  It's very important to maintain the CAIS program, to maintain production insurance, to maintain a NISA-like program whether it's part of CAIS or not. It's very important to have a disaster relief program to address specific disasters, as well as any other tools we can include, su

Agriculture committee  I wouldn't be qualified to comment on all the specifics of that, but I think we are now available for some funding under that program, to deal with water in a different way than they do in western Canada.

Agriculture committee  I have one final comment to help answer Mr. Hubbard's question. I understand you're going to hear from the potato agency, Potatoes New Brunswick, this afternoon, and your question on trade barriers and restrictions is probably a lot better answered by them.

Agriculture committee  First and foremost, it's important that we keep research funded publicly rather than privately, so that it is true research, non-biased research, and research that farmers can take back to their operations and implement into their own businesses and operations, and so that they c