One of the five former Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization employees named in a potential conflict of interest case because they also helped farmers fill out CAIS applications says he is being driven out of business by an auditing “witch hunt” targeting his clients.
John Sutherland of Sutherland Farm Consulting in Saskatoon said April 28 that targeting his clients for audits is unfair.
He quit working for CAIS as a part-time employee in 2006 to concentrate on his consulting business and most of his current clients signed on after, said Sutherland.
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“But they are targeting my client list for audits and although most of them came on board after I quit working for CAIS, they are being caught in the sweep,” he said.
“I’m putting the wheels in motion to wind down or at least pare back my business. My clients are caught up in a witch hunt and that is unfair to them.”
Sutherland said he did nothing wrong and played by the rules.
He had a few farm CAIS clients while he worked for the administration but so did his manager and others.
In 2003-04, when the office of the federal auditor general began to investigate CAIS, he was asked to fill out a conflict-of-interest declaration and did.
“I believe I am being singled out because I was honest and filled out the declaration,” he said. “I and my clients are being unfairly punished, in my view.”
Sutherland said his work inside the CAIS administration helped him help farmers to navigate the system. It is a complicated program that many of its managers do not understand.
But he was not using insider information that only he had access to in order to help his clients.
“I wasn’t using insider information,” he said. “I was using information that was available to anyone who knew where to find it and what to ask.”
Sutherland said he wants to talk to agriculture minister Gerry Ritz to let him know that most of the clients being audited were not clients when he worked for CAIS and to complain that he is being targeted by CAIS auditors although he worked by the rules as they were understood at the time.
Auditor general Sheila Fraser saw it differently.
She said working for CAIS and then helping farmers apply for CAIS benefits was a potential conflict of interest that should have been stopped.
