The AgriStability farm income support program remains flawed and in need of repair, the office of the auditor general has told Parliament.
In a late November report, interim auditor general John Wiersema reported that the program remains so flawed it is a barrier to farmers who need help.
“We note that Agriculture and Agri- Food Canada has improved in some areas, such as the accuracy of payments, but that problems remain,” he told a news conference after the report was presented.
“Farmers can wait up to two years for a payment and the amount of payment is hard to predict.”
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The report was more explicit.
“Despite the initiatives to improve program design, efforts to address the long-standing issues of program complexity, predictability and timeliness of payments to producers have had only limited success,” he wrote.
“It may be necessary to further engage the agricultural sector industry representatives and producers to ensure that trade-offs between targeting and timeliness are understood.”
The auditor general also complained that the objectives of the farm income risk program and responsibilities between governments, producers and the industry are unclear. A departmental strategic review that ended last year found that “objectives for income support programs needed to be clarified.”
The report noted that while the department claimed a 66 percent success rate in 2008 in processing AgriStability applications within 75 calendar days, in fact the success rate was much lower.
“In January 2011, 23 percent of processed applications for the 2009 program year met the 75-day standard,” said the acting auditor general.
“However, when unprocessed applications already beyond the 75-day standard were included, only 11 percent met the 75-day service standard.”
While a recent analysis suggests 85 percent of claims are paid within 19 months, it means 15 percent can be up to two years. The report said there has been no systematic attempt by the department to figure out why the delays happen and how to fix it.
The auditor general’s office also said that while the transfer of program administration authority to many provinces has been well handled, there is no clear rule on how provincial performance will be monitored.
The report also cited successes, including a decrease in errors on AgriStability pre-payments to 3.7 percent in 2008 from 12.3 percent in 2005 under the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program.
Agriculture Canada agreed with the criticism and said it would fix the problems when the new Growing Forward program is negotiated this year.
Yet at a recent House of Commons agriculture committee meeting, assistant deputy agriculture minister Greg Meredith said farmers should expect few changes in the AgriStability system in the new Growing Forward. He suggested the provinces were resisting.
“We took those specific issues to (federal, provincial, territorial) ministers on more than one occasion in the past two years, two-and-a-half years,” he said.
“In each instance, the collective ministers said no, we don’t choose to go down that path.”
