Alberta agriculture minister Ty Lund travels to Fredericton this week to resist federal government and farm lobby pressure to make Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance 1999 rules the basis for a new three-year farm disaster aid program.
But an aide to Lund said last week it is not because Alberta wants to weaken the farm support program.
“We want to maintain what we have here in Alberta because it is better,” Michael Lohner said in a June 30 interview.
“We are going there hoping to get equivalency so we can keep what we have.”
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Alberta wants Ottawa to continue to pay its 60 percent share of the province’s companion program, even if the rules are not the same as the national program.
Federal minister Lyle Vanclief has said he would like an agreement in Fredericton that creates standard safety net rules across the country.
Lohner dismissed as “federal spin” a suggestion that the provinces are trying to make AIDA rules less farmer-friendly than what was in place in 1999.
“They would drag us down.”
He said Alberta’s rule that sets the reference period as the best three years of the past five is better than Ottawa’s proposal that it be three of the past five with the highest and lowest years removed.
And Lohner said Alberta objects to the proposal that the new program build in coverage of negative margins, or farmer losses.
In Alberta, negative margins are not covered, but they also are not counted toward the three-year average, he said.
“While that may be worse for a few farmers, we think it makes the program better for most.”
The province objects to promising 70 percent coverage of losses in advance because it could lead farmers to farm to lose, knowing it would be covered, he said. “There could be farming the system where a guy buys a combine, running up his costs but knowing part of that would be covered.”
He said Alberta also will be advising against including the AIDA 1999 rule change on how to value inventory. It allows farmers with a crop declining in value during the year to claim an income loss on inventory, increasing aid eligibility. It is one of the key reasons federal officials are speculating that AIDA payouts for 1999 could increase substantially.
“We raise a caution flag on that because it is very much an unknown cost,” said Lohner.
“Predictions of money shortages in AIDA are the first sign of that. Ministers should heed that.”
