Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada News Release
August 29, 2006

GOVERNMENT COMMITTED TO REPLACING CAIS

OTTAWA, Ontario - The Honourable Chuck Strahl, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board, reaffirmed the promise of Canada's new government to replace the current Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization Program (CAIS) with simpler, more predictable and bankable programs.

"On January 23rd, Canadians voted for change, and that includes change in agriculture. This government recognized that the current farm income stabilization program was not working," said Minister Strahl. "During the election campaign, we promised to replace CAIS and we are carrying through on it as we have done with all other campaign promises."

At their June Federal-Provincial-Territorial meeting, agricultural ministers strongly endorsed the need to create a new margin-based program that separates catastrophic disaster assistance from income stabilization programming.

Canada's new government remains strongly committed to replace CAIS with a new margin-based program and will work with the provinces and territories to achieve this goal.

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