OTTAWA – Agriculture Canada has received high marks from the federal auditor general for the way it organized and carried out payment of the first instalment of the Crow Benefit buyout.
Federal government auditor Denis Desautels said the $1.2 billion to 210,000 landowners was sent out under clear rules, with a clearly defined objective and with little ad hoc tampering that could have corroded the fairness of the result.
In the report presented to Parliament Nov. 26, Agriculture Canada’s success was contrasted to the problems of the East Coast cod fishery adjustment subsidy program half a decade ago.
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“$1.6 billion program avoids past problems,” said a summation issued by Desautels’ office.
Advice on best method
One of the auditors involved in the Agriculture Canada review said the department followed advice from the auditor general’s office on how best to design the buyout program, which was set up to compensate prairie farmland owners for the end of the Crow rail transportation subsidy.
“We do not make a judgment on the program but on the way it has been implemented and that has been good,” Desautels said.
One complaint offered about the program is that Agriculture Canada has said it will be too complicated and not particularly relevant to monitor the impact the payments had on land values and diversification.
Other factors, including market conditions and commodity prices, could have as much impact on prices and diversification decisions as the Crow buyout, the department has said.
The auditors say that is not good enough. Two of the key policy goals were to compensate for expected land value declines and encouraging prairie agriculture diversification.
Progress on those policy goals should be assessed.
“Saying it is complicated and difficult doesn’t mean it should not be attempted,” said an official from Desautels’ office.
The auditor also praised Agriculture Canada for improving accounting standards and its control over the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars each year on farm income safety net programs.
In 1994, safety net spending was criticized for having too few controls, poorly defined goals and inadequate monitoring.
Since then, program details have been changed as Ottawa and the provinces co-operated to design a new national three-tier, cost-shared scheme.
This praise from the auditor general is a far cry from the reports of five years ago when his office was fond of targeting Agriculture Canada for the sloppy way it sent tax dollars to farmers.
The billion dollar emergency subsidy programs of 1986 and 1988 were hastily conceived, lacking in eligibility rules and almost devoid of follow-up monitoring, several reports complained.
