Handicapped by Design:Excuses
From a Farm Credit Corporation Newsletter
But agriculture minister Leona Dombrowsky says the Ontario Liberal government worked closely with industry stakeholders to address the industry's "immediate need" and that there was agreement with industry to use the most recent ad hoc program payments as the basis for the new program. Producers had until September 2007 to apply to those programs. She also says that farmers in financial difficulty may be able to access funding through what she terms "interim payments" under the federal-provincial AgriStability program.
From the St. Catharines Standard
To get help to farmers quickly, Dombrowsky said her staff used numbers from the federal cost of production program to determine payments instead of having an application process that would have delayed help. Money also had to be delivered in a "trade-friendly" way that wouldn't be confused with a subsidy and lead to complaints from trade partners. "We were basically trying to reach the same people who were not getting their cost of production out of those markets and sectors," Dombrowsky said. Still, she said some of the help provided by governments, such as insurance programs, haven't helped everybody in the industry. "That isn't working obviously. We have farmers who are saying they're in serious trouble," Dombrowsky said. But she said she doesn't know what the solution is and any resolution will require the help of farmers. "I don't know if it's fixable but we need another instrument to deliver the kind of support to farmers when they experience challenges, that will actually work for them," Dombrowsky said.
From Standing Committee on Estimates, Legislative Assembly of Ontario
I want to thank the member from Haldimand-Norfolk for the question-very similar to other questions from your colleagues on this issue. It gives me an opportunity to-I hopefully will be able to clarify that when we were asked to consider additional support for the cattle, hog and horticulture sector shortly after the election last year, the industry leadership put forward the case that because there had been some long-standing hurt in the industry year over year over year, producers in those sectors had not posted profits in their operations. That cumulative effect had presented some particular hardship, and there was a need to address that situation. There was a range of reasons that had been presented: the low Canadian dollar-or the high Canadian dollar; I'm sorry. I'm thinking about today. Then, the Canadian dollar was high. There were very serious issues around the cost of feed and so on, coupled with the fact that some in the cattle sector particularly had really never recovered from the BSE crisis. That is why we arranged the program the way that we did.
Excerpt From Answer to Petitions
From Answer to petitions presented in the Ontario Legislature by various Members of Provincial Parliament To accomplish these objectives, our government used the most recently compiled industry figures, the federal Cost of Production payment/Ontario Cost Recognition Top-up payment. The application deadline for the federal Cost of Payment was September 30, 2007. The federal government had an appeal process for this program. Beginning farmers that started farming in 2005 or 2006 could have made a separate application for the federal Cost of Production Payment. The payment was designed to target assistance to those dependent upon cattle, hogs or horticulture for the majority of their farm income and deliver the funds as quickly as possible without incurring unnecessary trade risks.