SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. — Eighteen months into its existence, Sask-atchewan’s brand inspection company is struggling with inadequate computer systems that make it difficult to invoice customers and take on new business.
Cameron Wilk, chief executive officer of Livestock Services of Sask-atchewan Corp., said the system has been down for more than half of the 18 months since the province turned inspection over to the industry.
Wilk said the Livestock Information Management System was developed in 1994, and the servers and systems that support it are older still. The system includes 26 computers and a main frame at the University of Regina.
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“With all those programs piling up, it’s really become an unstable system,” he said after a presentation to the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association.
For the first 3.5 months, the system wouldn’t generate invoices and staff couldn’t enter manifest data to generate those invoices. Right now, it isn’t applying the GST properly.
Wilk said the provincial government “stuck $198,000 worth of Band-Aids on that system for us this past half a year,” but it isn’t sustainable. As a result, LSS is applying to Growing Forward 2 for funding to upgrade the system.
A properly working system is critical for traceability and to allow LSS to start collecting checkoffs for the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association. It is developing a business plan to do that.
Provincial brand inspectors used to collect the levy. They would check a box on manifests to apply the collection, which the computer system would then calculate.
However, inspectors no longer had the authority to collect the checkoff when collection moved from the province to the SCA in 2009.
“Now that Livestock Services has been organized as a non-profit company, we’re beginning to see that we’ve got livestock inspectors running around chasing inspection dollars. We’ve got cattlemen’s association people trying to collect checkoff levies. It just makes sense to have one organization collect everything.”
The SCA has been collecting the checkoff on a voluntary basis and is worried that some are being missed. Wilk said the missing checkoffs are large enough to justify hiring LSS to collect the levies, but it will be an SCA decision.
Wilk also told the SSGA meeting that LSS is working with the RCMP to get better assistance when cattle go missing because of theft or fraud. Eighty-one reports were made last year comprising 916 missing livestock worth $1.57 million.
“They’re beginning to understand the value of these livestock and the challenges we’re facing in the field.”
The number of missing cattle is consistent from year to year, but Wilk said higher prices are encouraging more people to register brands and pay attention.
There is usually one large case a year.
For example, Price Waterhouse in Calgary contacted him a couple of years ago to say staff were flying over ranches in southern Saskatchewan to count cattle and could find only 890 pairs. That number matched what inspectors had found.
“His response was the Bank of Montreal has financed 2,400 pair.”
Court cases are also ongoing involving a finance company that provided $760,000 for animals in northwestern Saskatchewan and found only 82 head.
LSS also needs RCMP help when dealing with hostile people. LSS has four restraining orders against people who have become violent with inspectors, and Wilk said inspectors go in pairs or with RCMP when dealing with these individuals.
More inspections are taking place outside the auction market system, he said. Seventy percent of inspections were done at auction markets five years ago, but now that same percentage is done in the field.
