Farmers and Politicians Unite to Urge Changes to APP Program
By John Jamieson, Executive Director and Ernie Mutch, President
While most of you have been busy in the fields this fall, the Board and staff of the PEIFA have been working on a number of important issues and initiatives. Over the past number of months, the PEIFA has been faced with an issue where a number of industry players have been quietly working together toward a common goal. As many of you are aware, the Advance Payment Program is administered to PEI farmers through our office and we take pride in delivering a quality service to all farmers in the program. In this year alone, we have provided our clients with over $30 million in working capital. Our APP administrators, Tim Seeber and Andrew Wood are committed to balancing the needs of farmers with the administrative requirements placed upon them by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Over the summer, the APP program was audited and the auditors took note of the high quality of our delivery.
There are times when we have to balance program delivery with our lobbying efforts. In 2008, livestock farmers across Canada received payments through the APP program under a severe economic hardship protocol. Repayment of these loans was put on hold and a Stay of Default was put in place. Even though the economic conditions the loans were made under have not changed, we’ve recently received word from Minister Ritz that repayment on these beef and hog loans is set to begin in the not too distant future. As program administrators, we have been required by AAFC to send notice of this out to our farmers and to establish their repayment ability.
At the same time, the PEIFA has been working very hard to come to a reasonable solution for our farmers. We have been told that, under no circumstances, will the loans be written off. We have formed a loose coalition of groups and individuals who have been lobbying Minister Ritz to stretch repayment of these loans over a very long period of time. Involved in this lobbying effort are PEI’s Agriculture Minister George Webster, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea. Several meetings and conference calls have been made on this throughout the summer and fall by all of the players. Recently, we had representatives from AAFC here to meet with a number of affected farmers in order to put a real face on the situation. One of the problems facing us is that other provinces (particularly in the West) have been saying that they are ready to begin repayment on these loans. That may now change since farmers in the West are looking for assistance so they can deal with high feed costs resulting from this summer’s heavy rains.
As we mentioned earlier, we are trying our best to balance delivery of this important program while continuing to lobby for positive changes for our members. This is indeed a challenge however, we will not avoid our responsibility to work on your behalf.
