The federal government will use $230 million that wasn’t spent in the Canadian Farm Family Options Program to finance other support programs this year.
Federal officials have confirmed to the House of Commons agriculture committee that the Options program will underspend its $550 million two-year budget by $246 million.
New programming will absorb $230 million of the unused funding.
“We’ve got several things in the works right now that are specific to specific sectors in the industry that need some particular help and I hope we’ll have some announcements over the next month or so,” federal agriculture minister Chuck Strahl said in a May 9 interview.
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He said one of the new programs could be directed to the hog industry, which is facing cost increases, lower export revenues because of a high dollar, income declines, disease and a shrinking processing sector.
“If we want the industry to survive and be robust as it goes through this cyclical problem, I think we have to step in and help somewhat.”
He said some of the unspent Options money will also fund the government’s commitment to make up to $100 million available this year to compensate for rising input costs.
Part of the reason the Options program budget will be underspent is Strahl’s decision to limit applications for the 2006 tax year to farm families that qualified for help in the program’s first year.
Under original rules announced in July 2006, farm families with net family income of less than $25,000 in 2005 and $18,750 in 2006 would be eligible for help to reach that level.
On April 20, Strahl said farmers who did not qualify or who decided not to use the program last year will be excluded from the second year.
Critics complain that it was an arbitrary and unfair mid-program decision that leaves many poor farm families in a lurch.
Liberal Wayne Easter said during an agriculture committee meeting and in the House of Commons that the decision to limit eligibility scuttles the financial plans of many farm families who had budgeted 2007 Options money into their business plan for the year.
“The bottom line is that this government will be taking out of the pockets of some of the most hard-pressed farmers in the land a quarter of a billion dollars,” he said in an interview.
In the House of Commons May 10, he called it “an absolute betrayal of farmers.”
Strahl fired back by mocking Easter for the fact that at first he denounced the Options program as a “blame the victim” exercise that should be withdrawn.
Easter will continue his campaign to force the government to revert to the original rules of the program by instigating an agriculture committee debate on a motion to call on the government to rescind the changes.
Opposition MPs are expected to unite to approve the motion, which says thousands of farmers expected help this year.
“Those farmers have been prohibited from that utilization as a direct result of the minister of agriculture’s arbitrary and unexpected alteration of the rules concerning the right of producers to apply for the program.”
