Federal Funding Lies?

First off I was not sure where to put this, I thought maybe politcal conspiracies, but its an a touchy issue. Im not sure it would fit. Here goes.

I am going to bring up the issue of the CAIS program in Canada.

This is about all you need to know about it, I dont need to go into depth.

Modifications to the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) Program, allowing it pay out more than $1.6 billion in 15 months to producers hurt by drought, BSE, Avian flu and declining commodity prices;

From here: liberal.ca...

Basically they are giving out cash to the farmers.

Now lets look at some statistics.

According to stats Canada there were 246,923 farms in Canada in 2001.

That number was also down from the 1996 census, so we will assume the number is roughly around the 2001 mark.

From here: www40.statcan.ca...

Here are some net income stats from across Canada:

www40.statcan.ca...
www40.statcan.ca...

So now, if I understand this correctly (and nobody seems to be able to) 1.6 billion dollars is going to given to farmers.

Well our family farm has applied. Our neighbours have applied.

No money.

The most I have heard someone get was a few hundred dollars.

So the general public sees this, 1.6 billion and thinks, bloody farmers, what are they complaining about? nearly 2 billion bucks ! And they think that all these farms are getting massive loads of cash.

Sad to say its not true.

It would be nice to know whats really going on with the CAIS program.

Its got the nickname chartered accountant income support program now, because of the nightmare paperwork that is involved.

So this got me to thinking about other funding areas, are they the same? Where does the cash go if we cannot talk to everyone that is supposed to get money?

I would be happier if all these programs were abolished and we just got some politicians that worked on the real issue, cut the crap of surveys and studies.


Here is a page on how CAIS works for the farmer.

www.agr.gc.ca...

Example: If a producer's payment under the CAIS program were $15,000, the producer would receive $10,500. ($15,000 x 70% = $10,500)

In depth example

www.agcanada.com...

Ciao.