AGRI Committee Report

Supplementary Opinion of the Bloc Québécois Program Review
March 2011

Since 2009, the Bloc Québécois has been calling for a more indepth study of the business risk management programs. A number of farmers in Quebec and their representatives have identified various weaknesses in the programs under the latest Growing Forward Agricultural Policy Framework, charging that the framework does not provide an appropriate net. In our opinion, regular program reviews should be mandatory in order to address weaknesses as quickly as possible.

The Bloc Québécois has contributed to the drafting of the report and its recommendations and would like the government to follow through as soon as possible, in light of witness testimony stressing the urgent need for immediate changes and fine-tuning of the business risk management programs. We maintain that the federal government must not only consult but must also ACT.

Accordingly we support without any reservation the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) in demanding the following changes to the AgriStability program:  

• An annual choice between the Olympic average and the average of the last three years, with the highest being used as the reference margin. (This option would provide payments to some farmers who would not receive it using the usual Olympic average calculation.)
• Elimination of the viability criterion applied to negative margins. (Under the current rule, farmers with negative reference margins in at least two of the three years received no protection).
• Increase coverage of negative margins, from 60% to 70%. At present, the government covers 60% of the negative margin).
• An option allowing farmers to receive reference margin coverage for the remaining 15%, or to participate in the AgriInvest program.

In the 2008 election campaign, the Conservatives promised to create a true AgriFlexibility program, as proposed by the CFA, but they failed to follow through. Three years later and given the urgent demands from farmers and their organizations to establish a true AgriFlexibility program in order to address their specific sectoral and regional needs, the Bloc Québécois recommends that the AgriFlexibility program be amended to include risk management.

Finally, the Bloc Québécois questions whether the federal government intends withdraw to from risk management, leaving private insurers to step in. We have learned that the government was indeed considering this possibility while drawing up the new Agricultural Policy Framework. We wish to put the government and farmers on notice that we will be very vigilant about this.

André Bellavance, MP
Richmond-Arthabaska
Bloc Québécois Critic for Agriculture and Agri-Food
Deputy Chair of the Bloc Québécois Caucus

France Bonsant, MP
Compton-Stanstead
Bloc Québécois Deputy Critic for Agriculture and Agri-Food