Agriculture committee  Yes. CAIS works best where there is a dramatic one-time loss. If you're into a relatively stable situation, but even if you're not making any money or you're declining, it doesn't do you any good at all. To me, it works very well in some situations. You can lose a lot of money and not collect a dime.

Agriculture committee  A NISA-styled program has equity, because everybody gets treated the same. I'm saying with caps moved up to a modern level, because the old caps are so far out of touch they're unreasonable. But NISA does not address the one-time really bad hit, and CAIS does. So something along the NISA line in conjunction with truly a disaster insurance--that combination could work.

Agriculture committee  Self-directed is on top of that, because that is a replacement for production insurance. That works. What you're just building up on your own farm, your own little nest egg because of your situation, it works for horticulture because nothing else does.

Agriculture committee  The only thing that's going to save the land is if the farms are profitable. At the end of the day, if the farms are profitable, they will be farmed. If you have a bunch of farmers who own most of the land--and let's face it, farmers own most of the land--and they're not making any money, what is the encouragement for them to stay?

Agriculture committee  --if the farms are profitable, they will be farmed. Right now they're not profitable.

Agriculture committee  That's correct, and the produce section is what I'm talking about. Let's say California wants to move a whole lot of peaches and right in our time. They may come in and offer a deal to a major chain, and if they talk to somebody like National Grocers, you're talking 50% of the market—50% of the market.

Agriculture committee  All the programs that are in place are provincial only. The federal government has never participated. We want them to, but they've never been willing. We have worked across the country. We have agreement among all the provinces on a national program, because the federal government always said it had to be national, okay?

Agriculture committee  There were a lot of questions in there. I'm not quite sure what I should.... Which one was specifically to me?

Agriculture committee  On the “buy Canadian” thing, there's no reason not to do it. It requires political will. Somebody has to make a determination that this will be done and don't worry about NAFTA and all that nonsense. I said that before. Just go out and do it. Show a little backbone. Just do it. I know that's unheard of, but that's all it takes.

Agriculture committee  The American market access program, MAP, has been going on for many years, and we are the victims of this program. The U.S. Farm Bill supports the market access program, which provides U.S. producers with funding for export market development. We are an export market. Canada is a major target.

Agriculture committee  Oh, all right. Are we out of time?

Agriculture committee  Okay, thank you.

Agriculture committee  I think we should look at exactly what the Americans are offering to our retailers and duplicate that in our own market where necessary, because basically the Americans are coming in and sometimes offering $2 and $3 a box on produce as inducements for the major chains to buy. It comes in all forms; often they're buying the ads.

Agriculture committee  Another suggestion we have to make things better is what I think is a no-brainer, and that is a buy-Canadian policy. U.S. producers continue to benefit from a buy-U.S. policy for all taxpayer-funded programs and agencies. You're talking military, hospitals, schools, prison systems, all sorts of things.

Agriculture committee  On self-directed risk management, this is something that was in place. This is an alternative to production insurance for edible horticulture. It was developed in the 1990s, because in most cases, especially in the fresh market, production insurance does not work for our crops.