Alberta Agriculture’s new toll-free agriculture information line has
become the province’s rural crisis line by default.
Instead of calling crisis lines operated by mental health counsellors,
farmers frantic for help are calling the government’s call centre.
“We’ve had a lot of desperate callers,” said Leona Lind, in charge of
the Stettler call centre.
“It’s just been like crazy here. We’re on the phone and we don’t get a
break,” said Lind, who insists the eight specialists and six customer
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service agents in the office log off their computers and take regular
breaks to keep going.
Last Monday, July 29, the centre received 1,111 calls. Of the calls,
more than 500 were farmers wanting to register their name for a lottery
that gave them a chance at gettting free hay donated by Ontario
farmers. The rest wanted to know where they could get pasture for their
animals, feed for their horses, or what to do with the crop that’s
withered in the field.
In the frantic atmosphere, Lind tries to keep a close eye on her staff.
The beef, forage, crop, oilseed and special crop staff are not crisis
counsellors, but that’s what they’ve become during one of the worst
droughts in more than a century.
This spring when Alberta Agriculture restructured its industry
development sector, it shifted the focus from production assistance for
farmers to value-added information. Instead of farmers going to their
local agriculture office for information, the phones across the
province have been directed to the central Stettler office where
specialists answer their queries over the telephone.
Lind said the recent rash of calls hasn’t convinced her that the
government decision to direct calls to a central office was wrong. The
office would have been able to handle the 3,500 calls a week easily if
it wasn’t for people wanting to register their names for the hay
lottery. Lind has submitted more than 1,000 names to Canadian Alliance
MP Kevin Sorenson’s office, which is co-ordinating the Alberta part of
the hay lottery.
“This Ontario hay lottery has been a real nightmare.”
The type of calls to the office has prompted the Alberta government to
take a closer look at establishing a farm stress line similar to one in
Saskatchewan.
Mark MacNaughton, a forage and beef specialist in the Stettler office,
said a line where farmers can talk to farmers trained with counselling
skills who can also empathize with a problem, may be more benefit than
putting more resources into provincial crisis lines with trained
counsellors but no farming experience.
“We’re not counsellors and a lot of the calls are counselling calls,”
said MacNaughton.
During a meeting with members of the department’s human resources
department, MacNaughton suggested there be a way for calls at the
Stettler office to be transferred to a crisis line directly.
Staff now give out the number of the crisis line, but doubt if the
followup call is always made.
MacNaughton said so far the specialists have been able to cope, with
the help of others in the office.
“You recognize that some calls taken are fairly stressful. After one of
those, you get up, walk around and then get back at it and help some
others,” he said. “It certainly stretches beyond the realm of the job
description.”
Jacquie Aitken-Gaboury, executive director of the PACE Crisis Line for
the Peace region, said they are not getting any calls from farmers yet.
“Farm people are very independent people. The idea of phoning a crisis
line is not in them,” she said.
Instead, Aitken-Gaboury thinks the Alberta government should establish
a farm stress line similar to Saskatchewan.
Candina Wosminity a counsellor with The Support Network counselling
service in Vermilion, Alta., said they’ve only taken two calls from
farmers on the drought.
“The men discussed having to sell part of their herd because of a lack
of feed,” said Wosminity of St. Paul.
The number of people phoning the call centre and not the rural crisis
lines doesn’t surprise Daysland, Alta., farmer Ed Gaudet.
“Farmers are so damn independent,” said Gaudet.
Instead of phoning a crisis line, they’ll buckle down, get an oilfield
job in the winter and have their wives clean a few more homes to help
pay the bills, he said. “I just can’t see them confessing to people.”
