One reason so few disaster assistance forms have trickled into the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance office is that they were so late getting to farmers.
By this week, the federal government received about 675 completed forms. Some producers say that’s because they only got the forms in the mail last week.
A Saskatoon farmer who called The Western Producer said he requested the forms from the AIDA office at the beginning of March, but the package did not arrive in the mail until April 27.
“After three phone calls I finally received mine this week. Finally this week,” said the irate farmer who didn’t want his name published.
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“I feel sorry for the guy that’s the last on the list.”
Other farmers have called The Producer with similar complaints.
The government’s tardiness has ticked off at least one farm group.
“This AIDA thing is so slow,” said Linda MacNair, general manager of Manitoba’s Keystone Agricultural Producers.
“Farmers who were hoping that there would be some money from AIDA to take to their bank this spring to alleviate the crunch on their credit don’t have that money.”
MacNair said she was told forms were delayed by a printing problem. Federal officials didn’t have the forms in their hands until late March.
AIDA spokesperson Reg Grenier said the printing delay led to a backlog of orders, but office staff are “pretty much caught up now.”
So far, about 23,000 forms have been mailed to producers. Another 7,000 have been sent to rural service centres. Others have been downloaded from AIDA’s website at http://aceis.agr.ca/aida/.
Producers who want a form should call 888-343-1064. Grenier said the turnaround time is about two working days, plus delivery time.
