Manitoba’s farm lobby group is disappointed the senior governments are cleaning out the money left over from the Gross Revenue Insurance Program.
Two weeks ago, the provincial government announced it will start paying out the surplus left in Manitoba’s GRIP program.
Farmers who participated in the program will get $15.8 million, which will work out to about six percent of the premiums they paid into the program over five years.
The provincial and federal governments will take $31.7 million back into their general coffers.
But Keystone Agricultural Producers had lobbied the governments to create a research fund with their share of the surplus.
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“We’re saying that it was critical that it remain in agriculture for agricultural development,” said Les Jacobson.
“If it wasn’t going to be going to research, it could be going to safety net programming or it could be going to other things to ensure that rural Manitoba is better equipped.”
The Manitoba government is holding on to 25 percent of the GRIP surplus because of several lawsuits in progress.
Jacobson said KAP will press the government to leave any remaining money in the province. He said the group will also make the GRIP surplus a federal election issue.
He said Manitobans are being treated unfairly because farmers in other provinces got to use the government GRIP surplus.
But the deputy minister of agriculture in Manitoba said it’s standard procedure for unspent government program dollars to revert to treasuries.
“It’s not that somebody says, ‘Oh, we’ve got money left over, what are we going to do with it?’ ” said Don Zasada. “That’s not the way it’s done.”
The federal government’s director-general for farm income programs said Manitoba was treated fairly.
Each province different
Tom Richardson said it’s hard to compare the way GRIP programs ended in different provinces. Each province ran a unique program and ended it at a different time, meaning market conditions and budget situations varied. For instance, when Saskatchewan ended its GRIP program, the federal government had a $900 million safety net budget. Today, it has only a $600 million envelope.
Richardson said the legal wording of the GRIP agreements required leftover money to be paid back to governments and farmers in accordance with how much money each paid into GRIP.
Saskatchewan was one of the first pro-vinces to get out of the program in 1994-95. Richardson said it was left with a large surplus because the program was changed in a way that reduced claims.
When GRIP ended in Saskatchewan, the federal government agreed to provide some money to tide farmers over in case of disaster.
For two years, the federal portion of the surplus stayed in safety net programs and the Agri-Food Innovation Program.
“The interim agreement with Saskatchewan tried to correct a bit the fact that the program hadn’t paid for three or four years,” Richardson said.
“You had a situation where the premium was still fairly high, but really the producers didn’t get the benefit of the program.”
Richardson said the province has since repaid the $326 million.
