Tory MPP squares up against Agricorp in overpayment court challenge
Friday, November 1, 2013
by SUSAN MANN
It’s full steam ahead for a group of 85 farmers who have launched a court challenge of Agricorp’s program overpayments collection now that the group has a new representative farmer for the case.
Progressive Conservative MPP Jack MacLaren, the representative for Carleton-Mississippi Mills, stepped up to the plate because “it’s the right thing to do,” he says. “There’s no way government should be calling on anybody, in this case it’s farmers, to pay back money from 10 years ago.”
Agricorp hasn’t been notified of any changes to the court-approved representative, says spokesperson Stephanie Charest. But “we respect the judicial process and will not discuss matters that are before the courts.”
MacLaren, who is an eastern Ontario farmer, says he was told he had an overpayment of $300 and Agricorp “clawed it back” in the winter of 2012/13 from a crop insurance payment he received for crop failure due to drought. But MacLaren told Agricorp officials twice by phone not to take back the $300 “because I objected to them taking it.”
He called the government’s move to collect the overpayment money from farmers “unfair, unreasonable and it’s not right.” Private sector businesses would never be able to collect money they say they are owed several years after a transaction had taken place, he adds.
Charest says as a government agency, Agricorp is governed by the Financial Administration Act. “All debts to the Crown are collectable regardless of when the debt was incurred.”
Historically, Agricorp recovered overpayments from future program benefits. Farmers can still repay their overpayments that way but in 2012 Agricorp added a requirement that the balance on overpayments must be repaid within three years. As well, this year it has introduced interest charges on unpaid balances. The current interest rate is three per cent and it’s set quarterly by the Finance Ministry.
Charest says they’ve been working with farmers to be as flexible as possible in how the repayments can be made.
Farmers can assign a lawyer or agent to work with Agricorp on the overpayment. Farmers facing financial difficulties can call Agricorp to discuss repayment options. They can also request a review of their file and there’s a process to deal with complaints if a farmer says Agricorp staff have been unethical or unprofessional.
Agricorp works to balance its responsibility to “recover funds for the government while being sensitive to the needs of our customers,” she says.
The lawyer for the group of farmers launching the court challenge, Don Good, says they couldn’t get an order from the court protecting the previous representative farmer, Peter Tippins, from having to pay court costs in the event they lost the case.
But now that MacLaren is the representative farmer “we will be proceeding with the application for an interpretation,” Good says. He said in a previous interview they’re asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to interpret sections of the Limitations Act to determine whether Agricorp has unlimited time to collect program overpayments or just a two-year time limit.
A court date for the case hasn’t been set yet, MacLaren says.
MacLaren isn’t worried about possibly having to pay court costs if they lose because “I won’t pay that either.”
Asked if participating in the court case conflicts with his position as an MPP, MacLaren says he’s “supposed to help people. I’m facing the fire and taking on the risk that we might lose and they might ask me to pay the other side’s costs.”
So far, participants in the court case paid $500 each towards the case, MacLaren says. The 85 participants come mainly from eastern Ontario “but we do have farmers from all corners of Ontario.”
While the majority of farmers who had overpayments owed $5,000 or less, there were some who were told they owed significantly more. One grower in Good’s group owes $500,000.
As of Sept. 30 there was about $12 million in overpayments, says Charest. BF