Ontario beef producers at a 'disadvantage' says OCA's president

Sunday, April 6, 2008

by MARY BAXTER

Hardy says the issue stems from a problem with the handling of reference margins under the Canadian Agriculture Income Stabilization Program (now called AgriStability and AgriInvest). “If you end up in a negative position – and that’s where a lot of our (Canadian) feedlot industry is going – we need to have these addressed or some of these guys with negative margins are going to be forced out of the (CAIS) program,” he says.

To address the problem, Alberta has stepped in twice over the past four years with ad hoc funding for producers, Hardy said. Most recently was an announcement last fall of $165 million in transitional assistance.

Hardy says provinces shouldn’t have to prop up the national program.

“The federal government needs to come forward …They haven’t been stepping up to the plate,” he says. “We need the federal government to come in so that the provincial governments don’t have to come up with some of these programs that put other provinces at a disadvantage.”

Hardy wants the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) to take the issue to Ottawa, but says he’s met resistance. “They say there’s not a real need,” he says, suggesting this perception may have to do with the amount of provincial funding that Alberta producers have received.

But the OCA and CCA might be closer together than previous media reports have suggested. Brad Wildeman, CCA’s new president, agrees national risk management programs aren’t working and the emergence of provincial programs such as Alberta’s and $40 million in emergency funding to Ontario producers last winter is proof.

He says the problem is particularly acute in Ontario because the industry here has not only felt the impact of challenges such as a higher-valued Canadian dollar as well as burgeoning feed and processing costs but also experienced the greatest price drop for cattle.

Wildeman admits that “many producers think we haven’t tried hard enough,” but insists the CCA has repeatedly attempted to draw federal attention to the issue. “Personally, we’re all frustrated,” he says.

Like Hardy, Wildeman says the real fix has to come from having a national program of “real business risk management for every producer that doesn’t disqualify people based on size and demographics and all of those other things that come into play.”

Wildeman meets with the OCA to discuss the situation during the week of April 21. BF