CALGARY – Dissatisfaction with the Alberta version of GRIP continues.
A group of farmers calling themselves the Producers for Fair Insurance (PFI) are willing to go the distance with the Alberta Hail and Crop Insurance Corp. over shortfalls on payments for the 1992 crop and changes made to the 1994 contract.
Following a March meeting with wheat producers in Camrose, the minister of agriculture told them it’s difficult to make retroactive changes to a program once the crop year’s business has concluded. Protesting producers argue it’s an adjustment, not a change. They are willing to take the matter to court to recover the $19 million they say they are short for 1992. A large portion of the Alberta wheat crop graded feed following a pre-harvest snowfall.
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Payments were based on the price of No. 2 wheat for 1992. Feed wheat yields are adjusted by a special formula to upgrade it to No. 2 wheat. The price of the better grain went up throughout the year but the formula was not changed to take the increase into account.
Dwight Dibben from Walter Paszkowski’s office said: “What they would ask for in grade factors is indeed a retroactive change to a crop year that has already been concluded … the minister could not go back in and retroactively change a condition of the program and of the contract to satisfy just one commodity.”
Government shortfall
A further roadblock to making adjustments to wheat growers is the federal government, which is responsible for up to 60 percent of the shortfall. Ottawa says that if Alberta wants to adjust the payments the province is on its own, said Dibben.
The group is also rankled by changes to the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan that they say they didn’t hear about until April 5. They have to sign their GRIP contracts by April 30 and this doesn’t leave them much time, says Brian Olsen, who farms near Glenwood.
Olsen says past contracts indicated farmers would be informed of any changes to individual indexes, target yields and prices or area averages by March 1.
“This makes it very difficult to plan your cropping patterns or see where you’re going to be at,” Olsen said.
The producer group may pursue a court injunction forbidding the corporation from accepting applications for 1994, charging hail and crop has not lived up to its contract by not announcing changes soon enough.
Producers need time
In an open letter to the Agriculture Financial Services Corp. which administers hail and crop insurance, PFI spokesman Bob Klassen of Ferintosh asked the corporation to withdraw the April 30 deadline to give producers more time to appeal. Klassen said support for their cause is growing and no farmers are in favor of the 1994 changes.
Bob Splane, who manages the corporation, said he has received the letter and referred it to the legal department.
Splane said the changes are to make the program actuarially sound since the GRIP is in a deficit.
“This year it probably impacts more of those people from where they should have been in terms of their normal (coverage),” he said.
The Alberta version of GRIP has a $255 million deficit. The province’s responsibility for that deficit is $89 million or 35 percent.
