Agriculture committee  It's a pleasure to be here this morning to address the committee again. It hasn't been that long since we were here talking about the Canadian Grain Commission. For those of you who haven't seen me here before, my family and I farm 4,500 acres of grains and oilseeds in east-cen

Agriculture committee  We had a PSRMP program from Agriculture, Growing Forward 1, that we did study in western Canada as to the different rules. We looked at producer payment. We looked at the bonding system, insurance-based proposals, producer funded. Each of the organizations took their time. Many o

Agriculture committee  When I was in the office today, we were looking over some of these fee changes. One of the things I did notice is that there would be a fee issued upon companies of $500-and-some per month for the bonding side of this. The fee, I noticed, for the inward inspections for the third-

Agriculture committee  I know from the initial consultations that were held last spring, our membership said that the drive...as Rick said, on a farm of my size it is going from $8,000 to $16,000. Our membership said to roll this in slowly; we can do this over a couple of years. We're looking at an ins

Agriculture committee  Through the consultation that was held earlier this year, we did raise the same concerns as Rick about governance and how the organization was run. You mentioned public good and services. There are a lot of things the Canadian Grain Commission provides that are of benefit to the

Agriculture committee  In the current system of bonding, as has been explained to us, it's fairly expensive for companies to be involved and to be bonded. It's a cost to companies. Not all companies have a bond. There are some companies out there, as Elwin said in his presentation, that are not bonded

Agriculture committee  It's a pleasure to be here this evening to present to the committee. I'm Humphrey Banack. I'm the vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. We farm 4,500 acres of grains and oilseeds in central Alberta. We market between 4,000 and 5,000 tonnes of grain per year t

Agriculture committee  Yes. All the cattle price insurance program does is it allows.... We could do exactly the same thing by going out and hedging the Canadian dollar and buying futures on a mercantile exchange and doing all these things ourselves. What it does is that it puts it in one spot. It's an

Agriculture committee  When we offer education programs here, we do not limit them to Canadian students. It's important for us to continue to develop education programs to train the people we will need in the future. Our organization, through Wild Rose, has sent people over to Russia to help them mana

Agriculture committee  Just as you said that there could be that cross-industry disaster, in this present time we're looking at cross-industry prosperity. In times like this, I urge the government not to look at the times when there are going to be lower payments and say that there will be less need ou

Agriculture committee  Collective accounting, as I best understand this.... It's very important for us to look at each individual farm as it stands on its own. Each farmer's decisions, as he goes forward through the years, are important to that operation. If we come to a point in time where we make co

Agriculture committee  Yes. Young producers are innovative, they're new, and they will be the first ones using up the programs that are innovative. As a grain producer, I can only lock one side of my income equation. I cannot lock anything on the expense side. So programs that are innovative and new,

Agriculture committee  I'll start. I believe the programs were designed with farmer input and stuff, so I think it's very important for us to have programs that we can go out and explain to producers. When I travel out there and I need to talk to producers, there's a misunderstanding as to how the pro

Agriculture committee  When AgriInvest was brought out the first time, CFA felt very strongly about AgriInvest over the full-tier program. At that time, we moved to have it at 2.5% or 3% of eligible net sales. I believe we would still support raising the eligible net sales from the 1.5% we're at today.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I think that AgriInsurance, as much as we can look at it.... There are always issues as we move forward, whether it be in the crop insurance we use, or whether it's the price insurance programs that are available to us in the AgriInsurance suite of programs. As you l