Canada’s auditor general is launching a comprehensive review of Ottawa’s programmed and ad hoc farm support payments.
In a Sept. 15 letter to the House of Commons agriculture committee, Sheila Fraser said the report on farm spending through the Canadian Agricultural Income Support program and ad hoc disaster payments, including the BSE response, will be tabled in Parliament in April 2007.
“We are confident that the results will be of interest and relevance to your committee and to Parliament more generally,” Fraser said in a letter to committee chair and Liberal MP Paul Steckle.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
She also announced an audit of how well the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is prepared to respond to emergencies. This surprise “emergency preparedness” audit likely will examine both the CFIA’s emergency response plan for the future as well as how the agency handled BSE and the avian influenza outbreak.
She said the CFIA audit should be ready for Parliament in early 2008.
The audits come after opposition MPs on the agriculture committee asked the auditor general last spring to assess the effectiveness of government farm support programs. Liberal MPs opposed the motion, tabled May 17 by Saskatchewan Conservative MP David Anderson, but the Liberals are a minority on the committee and lost the vote.
Anderson said last week the CAIS audit is overdue.
“This program has been causing headaches for producers for too long and many of them haven’t been able to trigger any kind of payout while others have had their payments clawed back,” he said in a statement after the audit was confirmed.
He said the auditor general’s decision to investigate the effectiveness of Ottawa’s BSE response may expose reasons for “the government’s inability to properly provide for producers hit by BSE.”
The decision to audit the CFIA’s response to crises follows sharp criticism of the agency by MPs, particularly in its handling of the British Columbia outbreak of avian flu.
Critics say it mishandled disease-containment efforts, did not communicate effectively with local people and was reluctant to admit mistakes.
Fraser said the audit of Canadian farm support programs has already started.
The report and its judgment of whether farm support is effective and efficient will come during the last year of the current five-year mandate of the CAIS program.
A CAIS review committee appointed by federal and provincial governments has also started its work and is expected to report next year.
Meanwhile, Ontario agriculture minister Leona Dombrowsky said the CAIS reviews will not reduce political pressure on the federal government to improve the program.
“I believe the provinces will be able to bring to the federal government a very comprehensive litany of where it works and where it doesn’t,” she said.
The recently appointed minister in Canada’s largest agriculture province said she already has heard many complaints about CAIS from Ontario producers, including the fact that with the end of cost-shared companion programs when CAIS was introduced, some commodities are falling through the safety net cracks.
“I’m aware that some groups are calling for re-introduction of companion programs and I will be raising that with my federal counterpart,” said Dombrowsky.
“I have a responsibility to make it very clear to the federal minister that what’s in place now is not really reasonable.”
