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Agriculture committee It's a lot of the horticultural crops that you see growing in your own riding. I don't know if you have any details around the specifics on....
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee I can't address that myself. I don't know, Scott, whether you have anything to—
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee I go back to the point that returning to the 85% is a short-term measure that will hopefully provide some relief to our farmers. Is it going to be the ultimate answer to the problem we're facing? It probably is not. Again, we have to do a deep dive into the issues and the program
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Yes, there are certain provinces that you mentioned. Quebec and B.C. just made the announcement where they're doing some top-ups. The unfortunate reality is that provinces have some fiscal issues before them as well and they are not all in the position to be able to make that com
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Absolutely. The effect is not just on young farmers, but on the industry as a whole. When you look at the mental health of our farmers, you see that we're facing increasing stress levels. Farmers have to plant crops in the ground in a couple weeks time, but their bins are full fr
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Our industry is multi-commodity. When you have a suite of programs targeting certain commodities within that, it makes it difficult for the rest of the commodities to compete in their marketplace. Livestock simply isn't covered at all. Horticultural crops that aren't covered are
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Starting the dialogue is key. We're at this point here right now. We appreciate the opportunity to have the dialogue. That's a key first step. That's one that we're certainly appreciative of. Successive reviews in the past haven't come to the root of the problem. The devil is goi
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Certainly, deferring the payments under the advance payments program has been a welcome relief for our farmers, but we continue to see that we can't borrow our way out this. This is not what we want to do. We want to have a suite of programs in place that are effective, timely an
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee That was the prioritization on production insurance for livestock and horticultural crops. Currently, the insurance programs that are in place don't cover the whole suite of products that we as an industry grow and produce, so we would like to see that enhanced to the point wher
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee I would agree, for sure, that any R and D that goes into those types of issues that help us move forward in these increasingly changing times would certainly be welcome. With regard to recognition of what farmers and the agricultural industry do from a climate change perspectiv
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee That's a good question. Scott, do you want to respond?
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Yes, undoubtedly. The return to 85% is what we would consider a short- to mid-term mitigation step in ensuring that our suite of programs is making sense. Is it the final answer of what the BRM suite is going to look like? We're not sure. However, as Ms. Roberts alluded to before
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Yes, it is definitely possible. We've asked in the past for some more detail. For example, I sit on the national program advisory committee, which is a government-led committee reporting back to industry on the BRM programming, and we've asked for an increased level of access t
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee Maybe I'll defer to Scott to talk in a little more detail.
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel
Agriculture committee That gets back to Mr. Barlow's question that we were talking about before. For us to understand the constraints being put in place, we need to have a look at the data. We need to have an underlying understanding of the reasons for it and how we can make it better. We're being ask
March 10th, 2020Committee meeting
Chris van den Heuvel