Most of the details surrounding Tuesday's funding announcement for the ag industry, centred around the Agri-stability program.
Federal ag minister Marie-Claude Bibeau urged producers to sign up to the program in order to access money to help them through the current COVID pandemic. Rick Bergmann, Chair of the Canadian Portk Coucil says farmers have gone that route before, without much success. "We've been relying on Agri-stability and for numerous years we have talked in many circles on how the agri-stability program doesn't work. We're really relying on somewhat of a flawed program to provide sufficient funds but it doesn't, it supplies insufficient funds. It really doesn't provide producers with the confidence that they require to weather the storm."
Bergmann notes that this program provide the backing that farmers need to feel reassured. "When a producer is walking or driving from his home to his farm, it's only fair that they have the reassurance that they've got a good backing, just like they do for other insurance for their home or their farm. We need to have some assurances and the agri-stability back in the day was set up to do that but again the program is no longer working for us (producers).
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