Agriculture Canada says human error caused the overpayment of $13.5 million to Saskatchewan CAIS recipients in 2003.The department confirmed last week it would not seek repayment for the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program miscalculations. The province has also agreed not to seek its 40 percent share of the payments.Information from a federal department official shows that someone calculating the 2003 forage benchmark per unit margin for Saskatchewan added two numbers rather than subtracting one from the other.The error was discovered when administrators reviewed an application from a Saskatchewan forage producer.“The cost of production expenses should have been subtracted from the average production value for forage but were mistakenly added, creating an artificially large margin,” said media relations officer Patrick Girard.The benchmark per unit (BPU) was used to recalculate reference year margins when producers had structural changes to their operations.Girard said the error occurred during only 2003 calculations, and a quality assurance process was implemented to make sure it doesn’t happen again.“Recently, the administration has also reviewed the procedures for calculating prices and monitoring the accuracy of BPUs, and has developed standardized tools to calculate the values,” he said.CAIS paid $481.9 million to 23,161 Saskatchewan producers in 2003. The overpayments went to 5,681 producers who had increased or decreased their forage operations.Saskatchewan has now taken over the administration of CAIS’s successor, AgriStability, and is processing applications in its Melville head office.
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