FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OUT-OF-TOUCH WITH FARM CRISIS ON THE PRAIRIES

June 10, 1999 For Immediate Delivery

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OUT-OF-TOUCH WITH FARM CRISIS ON THE PRAIRIES

"Breitkreuz urges government to scrap AIDA and replace it with an acreage payment."

Ottawa – Garry Breitkreuz, Deputy Agriculture Critic for the Official Opposition, again expressed the need for a new farm aid program in the House of Commons yesterday. "The Agriculture Income Disaster Assistance (AIDA) program is not working. Few farmers are even applying for the program and even fewer are receiving compensation from AIDA. The government does not realize that what they have concocted is not a disaster assistance program but is itself a complete disaster," Breitkreuz declared.

Breitkreuz pointed out the immense problems with AIDA in the House of Commons:

Because the program is tied to NISA, a farmer’s income has to fall to almost 40% to qualify for compensation, not the 30% as the Minister of Agriculture has stated.

Family members that have separate farm operations are not considered separate farms under the AIDA program - even though they both file separate tax returns, have separate CWB permit books and have separate NISA accounts.

AIDA does not take into account farm losses. The Minster of Agriculture says negative margins are the result of bad farm management. In fact, a drop in commodity prices is responsible for an estimated 10,000-farm operations with negative margins in 1998 alone. Will the Minister of Agriculture tell these 10,000 farmers that they are bad managers?

AIDA does not accurately reflect a farm’s financial situation by not taking into consideration outstanding lines of credit and expenses like the rental of land.

"All of these problems have been pointed out to Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief but he doesn’t want to listen. Continually the government has said that AIDA, NISA and Crop Insurance are enough to get producers through this income crisis. We already know that AIDA does not work and Crop Insurance has nothing to do with a drop in commodity prices. So what about NISA? In Saskatchewan, 8,600 farmers have an average of $303 in their accounts. Another 10,000 farmers have less than $2,800 in their NISA accounts. That is one-third of Saskatchewan farmers who cannot rely on NISA to help them out," stated Breitkreuz.

"The minister continues to emphasize the problem with AIDA is that not enough farmers are filling out applications. When will he realize that farmers are not applying because they know this program will not help them through this financial crisis? Farmers recognize that this is a bad program. When will the Liberals scrap it and bring in an acreage based program?" asked Breitkreuz.

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For more information, please call:

Yorkton Office: (306) 782-3309
Ottawa Office: (613) 992-4394
e-mail: breitg@parl.gc.ca