Agriculture committee  I agree with you. In the rural areas, you're preaching to the choir. It's very important to get it into the urban setting, not only to get them into agriculture but to teach them a little bit about what we do. The challenge we run into a little bit here in Saskatchewan is that it's tough to change the curriculum.

Agriculture committee  You do have lots from CCA, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, I believe?

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but motion number M-460 applies to animal products as well. Is that correct?

Agriculture committee  Right. I was a little concerned for a second. I didn't get into a lot of regulatory issues, because we have a lot, and I didn't want to get into them, but I agree that regulation is important. One of our biggest struggles and costs to the beef industry right now is also our regulatory agency, the CFIA.

Agriculture committee  I sure could. I know that you probably have--

Agriculture committee  It would be a cattle price insurance program.

Agriculture committee  Yes and yes. We get a lot of this argument between the provincial and federal levels of government--discussion, or whatever we want to call it. But we need leadership from the federal level to pull all the provinces together. Each province can do their own thing, but we truly need federal leadership to pull everybody together.

Agriculture committee  Transition from what?

Agriculture committee  No, I agree with that. I know we've talked to you a little bit about it. Definitely some sort of financial backing, whether that's guarantees or whatever, will help. But I think the risk is the big thing, and that's why one of these price insurance programs that is completely market driven....

Agriculture committee  Yes. We have a program, and we've gone through it with a number of the members sitting here today. It's basically a risk management program like the Chicago Board of Trade for U.S. producers.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. I'll make sure I understand it correctly. You're looking for what improvements we could make to AgriStability. I agree if it's some sort of a hybrid, that's great, but we've been struggling with a number of asks for changes to the AgriStability program, specifically for the beef industry, for a number of years, and we haven't received those.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the opportunity. The reason I'm saying no is I do agree there are a lot of problems with AgriStability, the viability test being one. We need to be very careful of cost of production types of models, because then that starts to interfere with normal market signals.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I do, and I'd take it even a step further: it needs to be international as well. I talked a little bit about an insurance program for beef producers. It could be very similar for some other people as well, but we don't have a Chicago Board of Trade in Canada. We have huge basis risk and currency risk, and that's why we're looking at a solution whereby we can tie in the futures price of animals to currency and tie all that basis risk into a simple program that allows our producers to compete with those in other provinces.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I'm very glad to be here today, and I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to take part in your discussions today. A little background on myself: I've always been involved in agriculture. I grew up on a mixed farm in southeast Saskatchewan. I attended university at the University of Saskatchewan and got a bachelor's degree in agriculture, as well as a master's in ruminant nutrition.