Agriculture committee  There is nothing like that where I live in Alberta, either, that I'm aware of. I am sure I would have heard of it by now if there were. I think it is a good idea. I don't know how spread out the land base is of farmers and producers in Quebec, but I know Alberta is a fairly larg

Agriculture committee  It definitely helps, but as I said, there's not quite the structure there used to be. I can't even remember the last time I was at a community dance, and they used to have them quite often.

Agriculture committee  I can't remember the last time I got together with some of the locals and just sat around and had a coffee or a beer or whatever. Times have changed. It seems that instead of farmers wanting to be friendly to each other all the time, it's almost more of a competition nowadays.

Agriculture committee  It does, yes. I would say that's a fair point. It does limit it, especially, like I said, with land competition. The competition to buy farmland at home is so huge that sometimes you get put off by one of your neighbours, or maybe you're upset with him about something. It is a li

Agriculture committee  Definitely the cost of production went up. Fertilizer, fuel and a lot of products that we need to use turned more expensive, definitely. In return, we did not get any more profit for the product that we produced. All the new taxes did was just take more money out of our profits,

Agriculture committee  I actually own my own farm, so I am my own employer.

Agriculture committee  My wife does keep a pretty good eye on me. She is quite supportive. I farm alongside my father, so he has been a fairly good help since I've opened up about some of these things with him. He doesn't really understand all of the details of it either. It is different when you wor

Agriculture committee  It was a difficult decision, I suppose, but it was an easy decision at the same time. I knew that I would not have a super-easy life ahead of me and that I would be putting in a lot of long hours, but it really was what I wanted to do. I guess if your heart is in it and if you

Agriculture committee  I've talked to a lot of people individually at home. There's not necessarily a group, but I'll talk to anybody, whether it's ag producers, friends of mine from school days or other people in the community. We've talked about it openly, but there's not necessarily a support group.

Agriculture committee  I haven't actually seen a lot from them. The most I've seen or talked about or heard about to do with mental health is through the Do More Agriculture Foundation in Saskatchewan. They're a great group, and they're almost a middleman between, say, the Canadian Mental Health Associ

Agriculture committee  I don't know if we have necessarily gone to the point of no return. Agriculture definitely has changed. There are fewer farms, but they seem to be larger. There are fewer individual producers, as you said, than when you would meet with a bunch of your farming colleagues on the ch

Agriculture committee  It has. It used to bother me a lot more than it does now, because you're never going to change the mind of some people. Certain animal activists are always going to think farm producers or cattlemen are the worst people in the world. A group of people in the middle are trying to

Agriculture committee  Yes, definitely. It's very different now from how it was. Mental health in agriculture is really just starting to turn into a huge thing. It's starting to snowball a bit now. If I had been talking about this a few years ago, there would have been a lot more pressure on me and q

Agriculture committee  There are some programs. Last year, when we had a bit of a drought year and we didn't have a great crop, I still didn't quite qualify to get paid out on crop insurance. The crop insurance program is something I've paid into every year. With some of our drought fields this year,

Agriculture committee  I think that needs to be looked at a little closer, in my opinion.