CALGARY – As federal and provincial agriculture ministers work toward design of a long-promised stand-alone disaster program for producers, they appear at odds over how close they are to a workable program.
Federal agriculture minister Chuck Strahl is touting a Nov. 14 federal-provincial agreement on the outline of a stand-alone farm disaster program as a breakthrough in farmer-friendly support.
“This is important because in times past, the disasters are almost always on an ad hoc basis,” he told a news conference after a one-day federal-provincial ministers’ meeting.
Read Also
Stock dogs show off herding skills at Ag in Motion
Stock dogs draw a crowd at Ag in Motion. Border collies and other herding breeds are well known for the work they do on the farm.
“What this allows ministers to do is engage … . Obviously it always seems like there’s more work to be done but by agreeing to a framework, I can start the process of working with my provincial counterparts, identifying disasters when they come up, moving quickly to fill the gaps that are not already covered.”
Strahl said the agreement on a stand-alone disaster program, details of which are not yet published, is “a significant change. Producers have been asking for it and we’ve delivered that today.”
He predicted that within weeks Ottawa can begin negotiating disaster co-funding with provinces, ranging from drought compensation in the Peace River to payments for damage from golden nematode infection in Quebec’s potato crop.
From provincial ministers comes a far more cautious assessment.
There is a federal-provincial framework agreement, but unresolved are key questions about how disasters are defined, who makes the disaster declaration, how benefits are defined and what portion of the costs each level of government pays.
“There are a lot of details yet to be worked out, including who gets to declare a disaster and who pays what,” Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk said after the meeting. “The federal proposal for a traditional cost-share formula (60-40) is not on for Manitoba. We believe disaster is a federal responsibility.”
The next day in Regina, Saskatchewan minister Mark Wartman told reporters that Ottawa is insisting on the traditional 60 percent federal and 40 percent provincial funding split.
“The provinces, to a province, are saying 90-10 to 100 percent federal funding on the disaster piece,” he said.
Wartman suggested that Saskatchewan, despite its opposition, seems to have little option but to “swallow” the 60-40 formula generally. But disaster funding still is at issue.
Despite Strahl’s optimism that new disaster program agreements will begin to happen quickly now that a framework has been approved by ministers, Wartman expects it will be at least spring 2007 before “parameters” to the program are announced.
Even Strahl’s closest provincial ally Doug Horner, Alberta agriculture minister, emphasized that the cost-sharing formula and the definition of a disaster remain major unresolved issues.
A provincial official involved in the negotiations said the Conservative federal government has “made election promises and this is all about giving them the cover to tell farmers they have met those promises. These are not proposals with a lot of detail.”
