Agriculture committee  The help lines have been re-established in rural Canada for a reason. This is not just an economic situation. This is a family situation; this is a community situation. If Canada lets our producers fall, there are going to be equipment dealers, there are going to be veterinaria

Agriculture committee  That's one way of addressing it, through APP. It's not the only solution. We did meet with the minister this morning at 8 o'clock. We think there are some opportunities and possibilities, but the issue is about timing. It's time to deliver. We have to get it done. We have to st

Agriculture committee  To date we haven't had a response.

Agriculture committee  Do you want to respond, Stephen?

Agriculture committee  My response is very simple: the time to talk is over; the time to deliver is now. Talking doesn't help us anymore. The direction needs to come from the political side down. We've been working with the bureaucrats for about two to two and a half months, and I think they're very cl

Agriculture committee  To answer the first question, I have two examples. There was a producer in Middlesex County who took out the APP. He got his money. Two weeks later he got a CAIS cheque, but it went to pay off the APP. The second story is about a young producer in Perth County, who was counting

Agriculture committee  We need loans that are available that come in behind the bank for security reasons. If APP is going to be the vehicle we use to address that, then we need significant legislative change to make it possible.

Agriculture committee  They would be security tied to inventory, and a delinking with CAIS, or at least based on future CAIS payments as opposed to the immediate ones. Third is the issue of the definition of “$400,000 per unit” as opposed to “producer”. Fourth, it would also be helpful if the repayment

Agriculture committee  What we need is cash for our producers through a loan program to avoid a Black Friday and an animal welfare issue that would not be helpful.

Agriculture committee  That isn't countervailable and that has some security. Secondly, we need the federal and provincial governments to work together to fix the CAIS program and to get it done quickly.

Agriculture committee  Cash is a huge problem. It's not a normal low. We don't want to lose the infrastructure in this country. We don't want rural Canada to be decimated, so absolutely. There are COD feed deliveries now, and at a certain point the unsecured creditors say we can't go any further. When

Agriculture committee  Let me be clear that the December 19th response was a cruel joke to many of our producers. There were false hopes and false assumptions and false expectations that simply weren't deliverable. The dollars are there but are currently not available to help us through the process. W

Agriculture committee  Although we would love to have money in our pocket that doesn't have to be repaid, we live in a globalized world and are concerned about trade. We're committed to living in that reality. What we need is the ability to allow our producers to have a chance to make an intelligent b

Agriculture committee  Thank you again for giving us the opportunity, and for your continuing concern in terms of what's happening in our sector. They're extremely difficult times. We're going to address the two questions that we've been asked to address in terms of this committee. One is the reaction

Agriculture committee  And I wanted to respond.