Agriculture committee  Yes. The council was definitely consulted about this change, and we were very vocal. We wrote letters to the minister. We wrote letters to the ADMs. We were part of meetings in Ottawa. Our council was fortunate, because we were one of 14 across Canada who had experience, unde

Agriculture committee  We do have to do this for the province for the Growing Forward framework also.

Agriculture committee  I would say no, there's definitely a more complex agreement now in place.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. We have tremendous pressure, as Gord and Kim mentioned. The signing of the agreement was delayed. We just signed basically a week and a half ago. With that signing came a requirement that we have to basically commit $7.9 million before March 31, 2010, which is a huge

Agriculture committee  Absolutely, we've had numerous letters back and forth for the past three or four months to the assistant deputy minister level at adaptation division. Their response is simply that this is the new directive they've been given, and we have to work within it.

Agriculture committee  No, it doesn't, because our program, the program we're talking about, is close to $28 million. We do have requirements for certain projects. If they exceed $100,000, then I guess they're entitled to a repayable grant, or what we would call a loan, for the for-profit organizations

Agriculture committee  My understanding is that in October 2008 there was a new policy called the transfer payment and directive. That's pretty much when we got captured under our CAP agreement.

Agriculture committee  What we were told is that grants are not appropriate wherever funding is passed on to recipients to be then further disbursed to one or more entities; this is what we were told. As a third party delivery agent, it was not appropriate for us to receive money as a grant and then ha

Agriculture committee  Just before this meeting, I was talking about the tender fruit industry. To give an example, we would do a pear research initiative under our old program, which we received as a grant. This actual research project has been going on for close to nine years. Pear research in the Ni

Agriculture committee  As much as we try to implement government programs with bare minimum costs, it's becoming harder and harder to do. We want to say that we don't disagree with the concepts and notions behind accountability. We understand why these standards are put in place. We want to say on reco