CRITICS of the federal Options program for low-income farm families, recently extended by the Conservatives for a second year, have some harsh analysis indeed.
“Producers and farm leaders have said that Options is not the right kind of program to address chronic low income among farm families,” one critic said.
The most that can be salvaged by having a flawed program run a second year is to provide evidence of what not to do again.
“Completing the Options program’s second year will allow for an evaluation of the program, which will provide information on how to make programs more responsive to the needs of farm families.”
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Ouch, that’s mean. But wait a minute. That was no critic of the Conservatives.
That was Conservative agriculture minister Chuck Strahl who announced the Options extension and explained that while it was unpopular, one more year’s experience would be useful.
A more tepid defence of a program that will cost taxpayers more than $100 million in 2007-08 is hard to imagine. And the real critics on the opposition benches and in the farm community are even harsher.
They accuse the Conservatives of betraying their promise to help low income farm families by making the rules more restrictive, effectively denying help to families that had enough income in 2005 to miss the cutoff for aid but met the income criterion in 2006 because of a decline in farm income.
In the House of Commons, Liberal critic Wayne Easter said Strahl “has found a new low in taking money out of farmers’ pockets” by changing the rules and eliminating some poor families from the program.
“Eliminating planned critical financing is outrageous,” he thundered.
He was reacting to Strahl’s announcement that, for the 2006 tax year, Options payments will be limited to those who qualified in 2005, having grossed at least $50,000 from the farm and having had net family income of less than $25,000 or $15,000 for a single farmer.
Second year maximum payments will be capped at 75 percent of first year levels: $18,750 for families and $11,250 for individuals.
Easter was far from the only critic. Saskatchewan farm counsellor and former income rally organizer Bob Thomas telephoned one day to verify that only farms qualifying for the 2005 tax year low-income benefit would be eligible for help for 2006.
“That is so unfair,” he said. ” It is a program to help low-income families and yet this rule will shut out people who didn’t qualify the first year but had a disastrous year in 2006 and are being penalized for doing better in 2005.”
From the beginning, Options has been a political disaster, even if its farm support instinct was lauded.
The $50,000 gross income requirement was condemned as too high. The requirement that recipients take a business planning or management course was condemned as a “blame the victim” attitude, an assumption that farmers are poor because of their own inadequacies.
And some rural Conservative MPs complained it was offensive to farmers because it is perceived as rural welfare.
Imagine Strahl stroking off days on his calendar and writing in his diary: “just 330 sleeps left before this political disaster is behind me.”
