There is no guarantee that thousands of Quebec and Ontario farmers suffering income losses from the devastating mid-January ice storm will receive government compensation, federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief said last week.
“That has yet to be determined,” he told a Jan. 16 news conference called after two days of touring damaged areas. “The priority now is ‘let’s get the lights back on’.”
Existing disaster financial assistance rules compensate for capital losses but not lost income. Ottawa and the provinces share the cost.
He said under the formula, Ottawa will be paying its share “and there is no limit on the amount of money, as long as it fits into the program.”
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But for farmers facing losses that could run into millions of dollars from lost milk production, dead animals and ruined maple sugar trees, that is the problem.
“For many farms in Quebec and eastern Ontario, the problem is primarily income loss,” the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said last week.
President Jack Wilkinson said his national organization will lobby hard to win a commitment to compensate for income loss, even though the final toll may not be known for some time.
Tens of thousands of litres of milk have been dumped because processors were knocked out of production for days when the electricity failed. On the farm, there was a scramble, not always successful, to find generators to run the milking machines.
Pigs died when fans in their barns stopped clearing the air of methane. Chickens have died from the cold.
With many of the area’s sugar bushes destroyed or badly damaged, there are estimates that it will be years or even decades before the maple syrup industry fully recovers.
Vanclief said he understands the devastation and is sympathetic to calls for help.
After two days of touring damaged areas, Vanclief told a news conference that the damage is almost unbelievable.
“In some areas, you can drive four or five kilometres and there isn’t a utility pole standing,” he said. “The words ‘war zone’ come to mind.”
But he said it is not a simple issue to determine income loss. In the case of the dairy industry, lost production could be made up through a quota extension later.
In some other sectors, it will be difficult to decide what might have been sold, and at what price.
“Where do you draw the line?” he wondered. “I’m not ruling anything in and I’m not ruling anything out. For the moment, the present program only covers structural loss and we have to work with what we have now.”
However, he did promise to raise the issue of a broader compensation package with cabinet.
