Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I am a farmer from central Alberta, so a lot of the different programs you've talked about are certainly ones that I'm aware of, and I certainly hear about some of the issues associated with them.
I know many people suggest that AgriStability was designed by accountants for accountants. It's one of those types of things where people suggest that it's going to be so complicated. I think the common sense thing there is to start taking a look at where these numbers come from on your tax forms and all of your inventories. It can be made a lot simpler. That is certainly one of the things that I'm well aware of.
Also, they were talking about the lag time between triggering a payment and how long it would take you can get the money back out of it. Being close to the two years is pretty close to the same as what you would get with the grain you would sell through the Canadian Wheat Board, but that's a different point.
Mr. Allen and I were also on the public accounts committee together, so we had some opportunity to discuss what the Auditor General said with regard to those particular programs. I think it's important, too, to recognize that as a government we feel that this exercise we're going through right now is so critical in trying to get the information needed for Growing Forward 2.
I know that many people have suggested that they can come up with some written suggestions for each of the programs, and I think that's important. What Mr. Lemieux mentioned earlier in talking about maybe focusing toward the crop insurance aspect of it, with still other components that will be successful, is perhaps a way that we can look at it.
So when I go through all of these types of things, there's one question I have. I know this had to do with AgriStability. You talked about a five-year timeframe but then expanding it through to seven years, which would be dropping the same Olympic average you would be using.... I'm just wondering what the cost implications would be for something of that nature. Are people then going to say they want to have the best of the two so they can make their decisions based on that? Do you have any ideas, in each of your different commodity groups, as to how that would affect it?
Connie and Joe, I suppose, would be most closely related to that issue.