IT IS said to be a sure sign of aging when conspiracy theories become the easiest way to explain the world, so let’s have no talk of conspiracy here.
Instead, let’s call it something else, a phenomenon with a name and an acronym: Random and Arbitrary Bureaucratic Incremental Decision-making (RABID).
How else, other than RABID, can the complexity of modern-day farm aid programs be explained?
Some might be inclined to suggest programs are made complex as a way to discourage farmers from using them. That way, the government could say it has made money available but most farmers can’t figure out how to unlock the door to the vault so the government saves money.
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However, that verges on the paranoid conspiracy theory of government aid and we’ll have none of that.
So RABID must be the explanation.
Bureaucrats, presented with a problem such as “some prairie farmers cannot seed because it is too wet and they need money”, set to work creating a policy contraption so complicated that it will take a team of Moose Jaw accountants to figure it out.
Farmers who have struggled to figure out what they are eligible for in 1998 under the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program will be able to get an advance on their 1999 claim for income not yet earned or lost, if only they can get over the hump of figuring out last year’s numbers.
Net Income Stabilization Account rules have been changed to make withdrawals easier this year, but the result is rules on top of rules, calculations of triggers and eligibility levels, penalties and incentives.
A new language has been created to discuss all this, a language shared by bureaucrats, farm leaders and a few politicians in the know. It makes sense to them.
Those farmers, already awash in the complex world of modern-day farming, who dare voice nostalgia for simpler times when requests for aid were greeted with comprehensible offers, often are dismissed as simple-minded boobs who expect governments to write cheques.
Blessed is the farmer whose kid decided to become an accountant instead of working on the farm.
The argument often is made that aid programs must be complex because trade rules and fairness demand it.
Yet farmers in other countries whose governments presumably follow the same trade rules seem able to get support to farmers in ways that do not require the interpretative skills of a Winnipeg lawyer.
So we’re back to RABID. Rules are created by bureaucrats and sold to politicians as the only way to cover all angles. Future generations of the program simply add layers of complexity.
Only the bureaucrats understand them.
It is a government disease. In many departments now, rules and regulations have become so complex and language so dense that officials are hired to turn communication back into English that Canadians who pay the bills can understand.
It is not mere nostalgia to wish that governments would design offers of aid that did not simply load more complexity and uncertainty onto already-stressed farmers.
