Agricorp audit reaches final stage

Thursday, June 19, 2008

by SUSAN MANN

The audit field work is now done and the report is being finalized, auditor general communications coordinator Tina Randoja told Better Farming Tuesday. Areas that were studied can’t be released until the report goes to Ontario Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky. She’s expected to get it the first part of July. It will be made public sometime after that.

The auditors have done a very thorough review of the organization, Agricorp spokesperson Annie Cote-Kennedy says. “What we do expect is to have a detailed report back from them with recommendations on areas of improvement.”

Dombrowsky wrote to the auditor in August, 2007 requesting the audit after hearing from general farm groups and individual farmers that program delivery is mired in delays.

“There had been some concerns from farmers that they wanted a value-for-money audit of Agricorp to ensure that the programs are being delivered the way that they should be,” says Kelly Synnott, the minister’s spokesperson.

Anecdotal evidence shows Agricorp is slow in delivering program funds to farmers “when in other provinces they’ve been able to kick the money out the door in a relatively quick fashion,” says Grant Robertson, Ontario coordinator for the National Farmers Union.

In response, Cote-Kennedy says a report from the federal government shows Agricorp was ahead of other jurisdictions in getting its CAIS applications processed for the 2005 and 2006 program years.

Auditing Agricorp is a good first step but problems in the agricultural sector are much deeper and more widespread, Robertson explains. That’s why NFU has asked Ontario’s ombudsman to thoroughly investigate the entire ministry.

“OMAFRA is failing in its duty to properly direct and shape Ontario food and agriculture systems,” NFU wrote in its November, 2007 brief to the ombudsman.

The ministry has lost its way. “Led astray by too close a relationship with agribusiness and in search of short term political goals, the ministry is mismanaging both our food system and our rural economy leaving them weak and vulnerable,” it wrote in the brief.

In criticizing the ministry, NFU made it clear that it wasn’t attacking OMAFRA staff. “NFU doesn’t question their professionalism nor their commitment to positive outcomes.”

To read the entire 28-page brief go the NFU Canada website at: www.nfu.ca/ and click on ‘Briefs and Policy’ at the top of the page.

The current government has made some positive moves on, for example, local food initiatives. But NFU still believes there’s a huge overdependence within the ministry on encouraging farmers to focus on exports and not ensuring they’ve captured their own local markets. “There’s lots of money to be made here and we’re allowing that money to be made by others and not Ontario farmers,” Robertson says.

NFU is expecting to hear from the ombudsman by this summer or fall. BF