OTTAWA – The solidarity that helped 500 Prince Edward Island potato farmers stick together through three years of battling Ottawa over a compensation package has fallen apart as farmers turn on each other over the terms of the deal they won.
Unity has been replaced by anger, death threats and legal wrangling, dividing the Island’s largest farm community.
“It is scary,” one grower said in an interview last week. “I can’t let my name be used. I have received a death threat. I am having my telephone tapped in case he calls again so we’ll know who it is.”
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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
Kevin Arsenault, a consultant who speaks for the holdouts, said it is a volatile situation.
“I know there have been death threats and harassment,” he said. “I don’t know where it is going.”
He said the warring farmers have forgotten that the federal government is the problem, not each other.
Identification error
At issue is a $15-million federal offer to compensate Island farmers for federal errors in identifying the virus PVYn when it hit the potato crop in 1990.
A federally imposed quarantine on Island seed potatoes and a massive program of potato destruction cost farmers tens of millions of dollars. Later, Ottawa admitted that in some cases, its tests were faulty and the virus was not as widespread as originally thought.
Potato growers banded together to fight for compensation and won a federal commitment of more than $15 million several months ago.
But Ottawa has insisted that all affected growers must accept the offer and forego all additional claims or it will be withdrawn.
A group of eight farmers is refusing to accept it, insisting they have a right to sue on their own for a better deal.
Legality of all or nothing
P.E.I Supreme Court justice Kenneth MacDonald is expected to decide within weeks whether Ottawa can impose the unanimity rule.
The heat is on the eight “hold-outs” to sign the deal, which all sides agree falls far short of actual losses.
But farmers who have accepted the deal and need the money fear the eight dissidents could scuttle it.
The eight have taken out a newspaper advertisement pleading with Ottawa to settle with the vast majority who want the deal, while allowing them to take their chances in suing for more.
“The truth must be told that the federal government is practicing economic pressure and pitting grower against grower,” they said.
The plea did little to reduce the tensions and the pressure on them, said Arsenault.
In their mind, the federal government is part of the terror campaign against them. During court hearings in early March, they say federal lawyer Robert Hynes called them “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
In Ottawa, agriculture minister Ralph Goodale refused to be drawn into the dispute.
“It is a difficult and unfortunate circumstance,” he said. “I just want to solve the problem. It is before the courts so I will keep my own counsel for now… .”
