by SUSAN MANN
A year ago, Deb Gilvesy found out what seemed like very good news: A review committee supported her appeal that a farm she owned and another family farm operation should be treated separately under the AgriStability program.
The good news, as Gilvesy would discover, wasn’t going to last. And it’s hurdles like the ones she encountered that has provincial Progressive Conservative agriculture critic Ernie Hardeman calling for change on how AgriStability appeals are handled.
AgriStability is a federal and provincial government program that helps farmers to mitigate income losses. At issue in Gilvesy’s case was a policy to combine some farm operations under the program even if they file separately for taxes. “This approach ensures only actual income declines, and not financial accounting procedures, trigger a payment,” Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s website explains.
The Ontario AgriStability Review Committee heard Gilvesy’s appeal (filed in 2009) on Jan. 12, 2012 in Guelph. A letter dated Jan. 27, 2012 from the committee told the Tillsonburg area farmer that “we met all the criteria that we (the farm operations) should not be combined,” Gilvesy recalls.
Only there was a caveat: Agricorp had three weeks to review the decision, Gilvesy had learned at the appeal hearing.
According to the Ontario Public Appointments Secretariat website, the committee was empowered only to offer “non-binding” recommendations to the provincial crown corporation that administers government farm risk mitigation programs like AgriStability. That means Agricorp does not have to follow the committee’s recommendations.
Three weeks passed and there was no response from Agricorp.
So, beginning March 20, 2012, Gilvesy began calling Agricorp to find out the status of the review. On April 11, the corporation responded with a voice-mail message: it had decided not to support the review committee decision. In a follow-up letter she learned that Agricorp’s original decision held fast: the farm operations would remain combined under AgriStability.
The committee was replaced in July 2012 by a business risk management review committee that handles appeals for not only AgriStability but also Ontario’s risk management and self-directed risk management programs and any other business risk management programs assigned to it by the provincial government. Yet it too is only empowered to make non-binding recommendations – for all of the programs it addresses. (The Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal continues to be responsible for crop insurance appeals)
Hardeman says it’s the "non-binding" wording that concerns him. “Agricorp can disregard any criticism of their own decisions. If that’s what they’re going to do, then we should not have this committee.”
Hardeman adds “we should not have forced people to pay money to hire consultants and accountants to go to this hearing and then find there’s absolutely no advantage to going to the hearing because Agricorp’s not going to change their mind.”
On Monday, Hardeman sent a letter to Ontario Agriculture Minister Ted McMeekin complaining about the appeals process. The letter was distributed to the public and media in addition to McMeekin. “I ask you to respond and address the problem without delay,” he writes.
Amber Anderson, McMeekin’s spokesperson, says they’re working on a response to Hardeman’s letter. She says the terms that established the committee are outlined in the federal/provincial/territorial governments’ agreement on Growing Forward. “This is consistent with all the provinces.”
Agricorp spokesperson Stephanie Charest says by email the committees are deliberately designed to “provide recommendations rather than direction. The delivery agent, which in Ontario is Agricorp, must retain the ability to decline committee recommendations where the interests of consistency and fairness across the national program are at stake.”
She adds that this “structure and approach is established by way of federal-provincial agreements to ensure accountability and stability.”
In Ontario, more than 99,000 AgriStability applications have been processed since 2007, Charest says. In almost all cases, farmers have accepted Agricorp’s decisions. The AgriStability review committee reviewed 43 cases and supported Agricorp’s decisions in 23 of them. Of the remaining 20, Agricorp accepted the committee’s recommendations in five cases and upheld its original decision in seven cases. Eight cases are still pending.
Charest says farmers who aren’t happy with the outcome of the review process can seek a judicial review of decisions through the courts.
Nevertheless, Gilvesy still has a number of questions, including why it took almost three years to get her appeal heard and what exactly is the purpose of the committee if Agricorp is not going to take its advice.
“Who’s the independent review body?” she asks. BF
Comments
Ernie Hardeman was Ontario's ag Minister when the first OWFRP program, the fore-runner of AgriStability, came out, and was, therefore, ultimately responsible for the horribly-flawed P2/P2 inventory valuation policy used in that program, an accounting abomination which probably hurt more farmers than all of bad decisions currently under suspicion at Agricorp. Even though Mr. Hardeman means well, he'd be well advised to tread lightly because sins of the past have a strange way of re-surfacing at the most-inopportune times.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
You can't go blaming the province for a bad federal program unless you really don't understand politics .
OWFRP came out before AIDA, and therefore, both the Province and the feds, had everychance to talk to somebody, anybody, everybody, who'd ever studied accounting at even the high-school level - they didn't. However, the feds did change to P1/P2 for the second year of the program, while Ontario didn't, and the feds got tired of waiting for Ontario to grab a clue about accounting, and went back to P2/P2 until Chuck Strahl finally ditched it about seven years later. It's not so much about politics, because even polticians seem to know more about accounting than senior OMAFRA staff, especially those who graduated from the OAC without ever learning even the most basic things about accounting
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The real intent of the Agristability program is promise big stabilization coverage, yet stabilize farm income at an extremely low or declining level.
Want proof? Simply look at the 2013 Agristability coverage level being absolutely neutered from 85% coverage level to an extremely low 70% coverage. It will be almost impossible to trigger a payment by anyone for 2013.
On top of this, I strongly suspect, Agricorp has most likely been directed by policy people (OMAFRA) to develop ways to limit payments in order to save the overall OMAFRA budget. The person in the article above is experiencing just one such example of a way to limit a payment. Next thing they will be adding in your off farm income or your spouse’s off farm income in order to cut payouts.
And the farm groups sit back and say thank you, thank you, thank you.
It is my understanding that, even at a 70% trigger for AgriStability, RMP will still be considered an advance on the provincial portion of AgriStability. Farm groups, each for their own unique reasons, never did figure out the arithmetic of the linkages between the two programs at the 85% coverage level, so there's no chance they'll be able to figure it out at 70%.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The point is, 2013 Agristability at 70% coverage has almost zero chance of a payout for most diversified operations, therefore the linkage to RMP etc. suddenly becomes a trival issue after the no payment at 70% coverage is recognized.
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