Agriculture committee  Those programs exist, and you're right that individual provinces have made those decisions to support the producers in such a way. However, there is an opportunity for the federal government to show an element of leadership in something like a price insurance program. I know that insurance is a provincial area, but there is an opportunity to show some leadership, which can be blanketed across the country, to help level, I'll say, a new playing field.

Agriculture committee  With regard to caps, I'm speaking as a small business owner with a family farm. I'm not incorporated. The cap issue is certainly a hot topic in different areas. We have $1.5 million to $2 million in sales. If you put a cap on a program--let's say $25,000--depending on the disaster that program was created to cover, why would I even be involved in it?

Agriculture committee  I suppose we have to respect the provinces' responsibilities with some of those issues, but if you keep downloading that, we continually assist in that unlevel playing field. Yes, there may be tweaking that can be done, but without looking into a whole lot of detail right now, I'd be cautious on that, because then you create 13 more mechanisms of unlevel playing field with regard to research.

Agriculture committee  It may not be business risk management per se, but there's an element that the federal government is not involved in right now. We see programs in Quebec, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, but we see the federal government pointing the finger at Ontario for not being involved. There's an area in that whole business risk management profile--and it's maybe not APF per se, but pillared within--where the federal government should be at the table providing leadership.

Agriculture committee  I'm also a beef producer. To go back into my own history, I started off with one animal; it was a 4-H calf. One became two; two became three. The beef industry financed my post-secondary school education. We just kept building on that. We are a family farm. I work with a part-time helper, my father, and we have just grown the business over the years.

Agriculture committee  You mean the SRM farm problem? Well, we've had the BSE issue since 2003. Technology and science, you would think by now, would have developed some kind of a magic tool to make use of SRMs. That hasn't happened. So it's going to be a complicated issue. Is it as big an issue from a food safety standpoint as we think?

Agriculture committee  Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to welcome everybody to this part of Grey County at the edge of Bruce County. I'm a full-time farmer. We farm in the south end of Bruce County. We own and operate a beef grazing and finishing feedlot. We sell approximately 1,400 head of fed cattle annually.