Agriculture committee  Yes. What we could do first and foremost, as Mr. VanderHout and I have said, is to 85% of 85%. That payment would be crucial. I think we should improve the AgriRecovery program so that if small growers have a quarantine event of some type, they get coverage for their products. S

Agriculture committee  My wife gets mad at me when I call myself a simple farmer, but being a relatively simple farmer, I sort of recommend that simplicity in systems is ultimately the best. The more complicated you make it, the more difficult it is for people to manage on both sides of the stream. Rig

Agriculture committee  I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at.

Agriculture committee  We're looking for the 85%, and ideally, we would be at 85%. That would be the balance. Most of my farmers are entrepreneurs. They are independent businessmen. They want to make money. They don't want government handouts, but when catastrophe hits, we need something that's sustain

Agriculture committee  Yes. Our sector was negatively impacted strictly because our distribution channels closed down, both in the U.S. and in Canada. When the wave hit at the beginning of COVID, as you're all well aware, toilet paper took front stage, and so did purchasing non-perishable groceries.

Agriculture committee  Versus 2015, this is much more challenging with the whole area of COVID and the risks that were exposed with COVID-19. That being said, since we've opened back up, as I said in my report, the floral sector and the nursery sector have taken off, because people are staying home and

Agriculture committee  On the study we did recently, three key points came out of that. Number one was the cap, simply because the size of the businesses has increased to such a level that the cap is no longer a successful tool and it caps out the large growers. The second point was the 70% trigger p

Agriculture committee  In its present form, no, because the cap stops at.... I think I get $10,000 this year, or I got $10,000 last year. A good soil-mixing machine is worth $25,000 to $35,000, so it doesn't line up at all. If you remove a cap and have it endless, or to our maximum, then I think it wou

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for this opportunity to address you this afternoon. My name is Andy Kuyvenhoven. I own and operate a flower greenhouse farm in Ontario. I serve as a director on the board of the Canadian Ornamental Horticulture Alliance and I am a past