Changing Ontario's RMP a tough task

Thursday, December 6, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

For part of this summer, Ontario’s non-supply managed commodities tried to convince the provincial government to remove the $100 million annual cap starting next year for their recently-launched risk management and self-directed risk management programs.

Dan Darling, president of the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association, says “we spent probably too long this summer trying to convince the government that $100 million (annually) should be expanded on.” But that idea fell on deaf ears.

So “we ended up just negotiating the best deal we could make,” he says, noting there are segments of the changed program that are a huge win for agriculture, including the ability to retain farmers’ premiums for future use.

In a July 14 letter to Brenda Lammens, chair of the Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council and Amy Cronin, working group commodity chair of the Ontario Agriculture Sustainability Coalition, provincial Agriculture Minister Ted McMeekin states agriculture in the province is facing significant changes. Farm groups need to face the changes ‘squarely’ and “make decisions to ensure the best possible outcome for a thriving agricultural sector,” McMeekin writes. Better Farming obtained the letter through a Freedom of Information request.

McMeekin states in the letter that he made it a priority to meet with commodity producers on several occasions in the weeks before July 14 but he was “concerned on a number of these occasions to see our energies focused on denial and resistance to change rather than working constructively to define a way forward.”

The agriculture minister called that approach “too narrow” and an unrealistic response given the province’s current circumstance. He advised the two groups that the risk management program had to be reformed in line with principles he outlined earlier, including that it had to fit fiscal restraints, demonstrate measurable benefits from public investment and leverage federal dollars where possible.

“The status quo is not an option,” he notes.

Industry and government rolled out the new programs this week. Darling says it was exhausting to develop the changes to the programs. “But we’re happy in general with the way it ended up.”

Commodity leaders would have been happier if the government allowed a bit more money towards the program than the $100 million annually, he adds. “Our numbers showed it didn’t need to be all that much more in order for it to have been a fully funded program most years. That was the discouraging part.”

Darling says it would have taken an estimated $150 million for most years. With that amount, “I would say nine out of 10 years it would have been a fully funded program.” BF

–– with files from Better Farming staff