Reducing red tape a priority for Ontario's Tories

Thursday, June 5, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

The average farmer annually spends about 154 hours, or four standard work weeks, filling out government forms, according to the Progressive Conservatives 2013 ‘Respect for Rural Ontario’ document outlining the party’s agricultural platform.

To address the mammoth amount of regulations and red tape facing farmers and agribusiness, the PC’s plan includes reducing the regulatory burden by a minimum of 33 per cent over three years and creating one-window access to government for farmers. The plan to eliminate unneeded government regulations was also reiterated in the party’s current election platform, Million Jobs Plan.

“Every time farmers want to do something it takes mountains of work, applications and reviews,” says Ernie Hardeman, Oxford MPP and the PC’s agriculture critic.

The PC’s plan is to scrutinize existing regulations and “if the regulation doesn’t present any positive attributes in having it then we shouldn’t have it,” he notes, adding PC leader Tim Hudak says if ministers don’t meet the challenge to cut regulations by one-third over three years then their pay would be docked.

Hardeman says the original business risk management program was designed to be predictable and bankable but when the government “put the cap in they took away the predictable and bankability because no one knows how much they’re going to get paid out and it depends on how many people have losses.” With the cap in place,  “the program is not doing what it was designed to do.”

Still, the party can’t promise to remove the $100 million annual cap now because the province is facing a $12.5 billion deficit. “But we do recognize it needs to be done at some time in the future when the government’s finances become somewhat more manageable,” he says.

The PCs do have plans to change the program. In years when the claims are less than $100 million, the government currently takes the money back and puts it in the general revenues pot. The PCs would set up a special fund so every year the $100 million and the farmers’ premiums would go into the fund. If “it doesn’t pay out the fund grows,” Hardeman says. “If it pays out then they use it. In a good year you would have a saving so in a bad year you would have more” money to spend.

To address farmers’ escalating hydro costs, Hardeman says they would reduce the actual cost of the hydro. “We’ve got to quit giving out contracts for the FIT (Feed-In-Tariff) program and bring some reasonable sense to the hydro system.”

The ever-increasing price of power is the major issue in this election, he notes, adding another is the expansion of natural gas infrastructure into rural Ontario. That’s something the PCs “are quite prepared to look at that and work out a deal.”

The PCs plan to “make the function of the hydro system more economical. I don’t see any reason why we need the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) to manage the FIT program when we won’t have a FIT program anymore. ” But the PCs won’t tear up existing contracts under the program. “We would not sign more contracts.”

Currently “we’re paying people to generate wind power when we don’t want it and then we’re paying somebody else to take that wind power off our hands because we don’t need it at a great big loss. It just doesn’t make sense.”

The PCs 25-page Respect for Rural Ontario report contains 15 recommendations on measures they would undertake for farmers and rural Ontario. Some of them are:

• Implementing a new approach for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with proper farm training, independent oversight and increased consultation with veterinarians and commodity organizations to ensure professionalism, fairness and accountability.
• Creating a new regional food terminal operated under the umbrella of the existing Ontario Food Terminal.
• Encouraging young people to consider careers in agriculture and food processing.
• Ensuring research and development dollars go to initiatives that retain the agricultural industry’s cutting edge and increase productivity.
• Increasing consultation with farmers and rural residents before implementing programs that impact them.
• Allocate a portion of the provincial gas tax revenue to all rural municipalities to use for their local infrastructure needs.
• Build partnerships with the horse racing industry to allow it to thrive.
• Improve access to skilled trades. BF