A far different Lyle Vanclief appeared before Saskatchewan Wheat Pool delegates last week.
Gone was the federal agriculture minister who refused to speak to farmers in Prince Albert, Sask., from the back of a pick-up truck last July, and who chastised United Grain Growers delegates last November for asking for farm aid when they hadn’t yet used their Net Income Stabilization Accounts.
In his place was a humble, soft-spoken Vanclief who told delegates he knew the federal farm aid program was “an administrative nightmare.” He did not, however, promise more money.
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Vanclief said there was likely a new expression on the prairies: “AIDA-you.”
“It has become a cuss word of choice out here and I know that,” he said of the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program. “This program is more complicated than it needed to be.”
The evidence, he said, is that only about half of the financial support available for Saskatchewan for 1998 has been sent. According to AIDA administration, 37 percent of processed applications have been approved, for an average payment of $10,400.
“I have told my officials that that is not good enough, and that is a lot more polite than I have been to them,” Vanclief said. “I told them that I want all of the cheques out before Christmas and even that I know is too late.”
The minister also pledged that the entire $1.07 billion allocated by Ottawa to AIDA will be spent. He said if existing rules make it impossible to put all of this money into farmers’ pockets, he will change the rules.
“That money will flow and that money will flow one heck of a lot faster in 1999 than in ’98 and I pledge that.”
Delegates hoping for an immediate cash injection were disappointed.
