CALGARY – An Alberta farm group has advised the federal government to pay some of the Crow Benefit fund to eastern farmers as a way to win their support for major grain transportation subsidy reform.
Unifarm has become one of the few western farm groups to accept a proposal from last summer’s Producer Payment Panel report that part of the $560 million Crow Benefit should be used to enrich the NISA accounts of grain farmers across Canada.
That could send $12-$14 million of the Crow Benefit to farmers outside the Prairies, a proposal denounced by many farm groups and prairie governments as a dilution of what has been a prairie benefit.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Last week, Unifarm president Roy Jensen sent a letter to agriculture minister Ralph Goodale arguing the eastern payments should be made if that would win enough non-prairie MP support in Parliament to ensure a major reform of the Western Grain Transportation Act.
Unifarm favors paying the Crow Benefit to western producers on a cultivated acreage basis.
“If that is what is required to get major reform of the WGTA through Parliament … we would find it acceptable,” Jensen wrote in response to Goodale’s call for a last round of opinion from farm groups about Crow Benefit reform promised for next winter.
Unifarm vice-president Ron Leonhardt of Drumheller said agreement to share a small portion of the benefit with eastern farmers may be the cost of doing business with an eastern-dominated government and Parliament.
“We need major reform or we are going to see the Crow Benefit cut until it is all gone,” he said in an interview. “This has to get through Parliament and many of those MPs may wonder what is in it for their farmers. Twelve or 14 million seems a small price to pay.”
Unifarm also has distanced itself from demands by the Alberta government, supported by Saskatchewan, that the Crow Benefit be restored to its original $720 million level before the method of payment is changed.
