Agriculture committee  I would say that's one of the reasons we're experiencing this. It only goes to show that when they start planting, it doesn't start in the north and go south; it starts in the south and comes north. So they're basically consuming whatever is being produced. I feel that eventually

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, I'd like to answer that. The bottom line is that we've seen things we've never seen before. We've advanced money to fertilizer companies to receive product, only to be told afterward that we're only going to get 60% of our order because of lack of supply. This is pr

Agriculture committee  It has that historical pattern. The difference between, let's say, a fall purchase and a spring purchase is minimal--minimal in a sense, but you've still got at least 5%. We've always given the farmer the benefit of the doubt. We've taken his cash, we've paid for it, and we've gi

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, in answer to Mr. Miller's comments, I did not mention anything about prices going down in the 1980s. My only reference was to the fact that our group did, but I was on the receiving end too when corn prices were at $100 a tonne--I go by metric tonne--and my input co

Agriculture committee  My call, back in October, would have been chemicals down.... Well, I like to refer to them as crop protection products, because now they aren't even chemicals. We're selling enzymes and additives. My call would have been down, but it's not happening. Again, I'm going to go back

Agriculture committee  My reference period, Mr. Lauzon, was between, let's say, November 2006 and late April or early May 2007.

Agriculture committee  That's it.

Agriculture committee  At that time, that was the cost of nitrogen.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Miller, first of all, speaking as a retailer and putting on my retailer's hat, we load at the port of Montreal, where our product is normally stored. And I've been in a situation where my truck is behind a truck of another retailer, and sometimes that of a farmer, who is payi

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, may I answer that? I agree with you. As I said earlier, in the past five years, farmers' incomes have been very low in Quebec and the rest of Canada. We can't earn enough money to live and operate the business. We're forced to borrow against invested capital. If, f

Agriculture committee  If you don't mind, I'll take 30 seconds on that. Farm Credit Canada has a great program for helping out or providing assistance to farmers. They provide the loans to finance their input costs, and we administer the program for, basically, a very small percent of interest. This is

Agriculture committee  Yes. At the beginning Mr. Easter mentioned that it's not up to the agri-retailer to go to the farm to finance their operations. I take total offence to that. We're in business too, as the farmer is. There are lots of programs for the farmer. We have to purchase and store the pr

Agriculture committee  Yes. My name is Greg Haney and I work at AgroCentre Belcan in Sainte-Marthe. I know customers who experienced a price gap that perhaps didn't reach 33% in 2006... I'm taking that example because I believe you were referring to 2006 or 2007.

Agriculture committee  Yes, in 2007, it was possible that the gap was 30% or 33%, because I have customers who bought their fertilizer early, and the difference between the price they paid in November and that paid in May was 27.5% for the same customer, the same company, the same volume. It always dep

Agriculture committee  That's it, precisely.