Despite a promise from federal and provincial agriculture ministers that environmental farm plan funding will continue past March 31 while EFP program details are being worked out, no deal has been signed.
Ontario Federation of Agriculture vice-president Don McCabe said the Ontario EFP administration is winding down the program, refusing new applications and telling producers who have been through the program to get their bills in before the end of the month when existing funding ends.
“Effectively, all agricultural policy framework programs are done March 31, 2008, and that’s when money that has been authorized ends,” he said. “We have heard from officials that programming will be going for one more year while the new programs are being developed, but where’s the agreement, where’s the money? You can’t run a program on promises.”
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On the Prairies, environmental farm plan programs continue to take applications, assuming governments will fulfil their promise to have funding in place April 1.
A formal intergovernment agreement will have to be signed in the next three weeks for that to happen.
“We’re counting on governments to do what they said they were going to do,” said Farm Stewardship Association of Manitoba executive director Wanda McFadyen March 5. “Everyone is hopeful that ministers will agree, details will be worked out and things will fall into place as they should.”
However, prairie farmers applying to get into the EFP program in 2008 are being told by Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration officials that their applications will not be assessed until after April 1.
A senior Agriculture Canada official said farmers and EFP program staff need not fear that funding will end March 31.
“Ministers have committed and we have been working to get the details worked out,” said Agriculture Canada assistant deputy minister Andrew Marsland. “We are close. An agreement will be signed.”
One possible venue will be at a March 28 federal-provincial ministers’ meeting in Calgary.
The issue is that while ministers have agreed that most of the business risk management programs will launch April 1, they have not agreed to the details of the non-business risk side.
At a meeting in Toronto last November, ministers agreed to a one-year extension of the existing programs while more permanent rules are worked out.
In the almost four months since, no funding extension deal has been reached despite warnings from EFP advocates that it was necessary to inject certainty into the program into the new year.
At the end of February, the House of Commons agriculture committee called the environmental farm plan program the most important non-business risk program in farm policy today.
MPs from all parties urged federal and provincial ministers to quickly decide on the future of the EFP program. A deal should be done “in a fast-track mode that would send a strong signal to Canadian farmers about the government’s commitment to develop an integrated approach for environmental programs in farming communities,” said the report tabled in Parliament.
