Ontario tops in pork buyout program
More of the province’s producers have signed on to a buyout program than in most of the rest of the country combined
UPDATE: Dec. 16, 2009 5:32 PM - Wilma Jeffray, chair of Ontario Pork comments.
More of the province’s producers have signed on to a buyout program than in most of the rest of the country combined
UPDATE: Dec. 16, 2009 5:32 PM - Wilma Jeffray, chair of Ontario Pork comments.
If you qualify for a federal buyout program, you must exit production, hog producers told
Photo: Martin Rice
OTTERVILLE – Don’t count on a mass exodus to fields of potatoes, sweet corn or strawberries just yet but there are signs these may soon be attractive alternatives for beleaguered tobacco growers throughout Southwestern Ontario.
This week, the federal government collected fines and civil compensation from tobacco companies totaling $1.15 billion for orchestrating a cigarette smuggling operation in the 1990s, and promptly passed on a little more than $300 million to hardpressed growers and tobacco belt communities. Provincial agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky says nobody told her about the buyout and she strongly disagrees with the way it is being financed.