Saskatchewan agriculture minister Mark Wartman planned to lead a delegation of farm organizations to Ottawa earlier this week to ask for emergency aid.
But cracks appeared in the unified front before the plane even left the ground when the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan decided not to go.
Wartman told reporters before an April 11 meeting with federal minister Chuck Strahl that the province wanted to get its request in before the federal government finalizes its budget.
“We want to paint the picture clearly,” he said. “We’re looking in the neighbourhood of $575 million.”
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The aid would be for all Saskatchewan farmers. Wartman suggested that 44,000 farmers, who have farm income of at least $10,000, could receive as much as $13,000 each.
But he added department officials were still working on a distribution formula. He also said the province would consider cost sharing, depending on the level of commitment.
“You want fairness, 80:20 would work for us,” he said. “We could manage that.”
Wartman repeated the province’s stance that 60:40 cost-sharing arrangements are “too much for this province to bear.”
The delegation was to include APAS, the National Farmers Union, the Farm Support Review Committee and the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.
APAS president Ken McBride said the organization decided not to go along because the delegation wasn’t asking for enough money.
APAS earlier called for support worth $75 per acre, or just over $3 billion for Saskatchewan farmers alone.
“If we had joined the minister, we would have been selling our producers short,” McBride said in a News release
news April 10.
