Billion Dollar Fraud

Please take the time to read this thread. I warn you, its Canadian politics mixed with agriculture Yeah yeah I can hear the groans, please stay with me.

But I can say, this is deep to say the least.

I have reason to believe that the Canadian government may be pulling a huge con with the CAIS farm support program.

So what is it? Lets check it out.

www.fin.gc.ca...

In June 2002, the Government launched the Agricultural Policy Framework (APF), which provided $1.1 billion in annual funding for Business Risk Management programs, including the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) Program, Production Insurance, and cash advance programs. To improve the business risk management tools available to farmers, Budget 2005 is providing $104 million over four years to extend agricultural cash advance programs to livestock producers, starting in the 2006 production year. Amendments to the Agricultural Marketing Programs Act will be proposed to ensure that current cash advance programs are consistent with the ";whole farm"; principles of the APF and provide additional support to producers facing difficulties due to BSE.

Canada’s farmers and farm communities have shown enormous resilience over the past several years in coping with an unprecedented combination of crises arising from weather, animal disease and difficult market conditions abroad. The Government will continue to support producers through its Agricultural Policy Framework to manage through these difficult times and be more competitive at home and abroad. To that end, the Government agrees with Canada’s farmers that producers should not be required to put funds on deposit annually in order to be eligible for the Canadian Agriculture Income Stabilization (CAIS) program. The Government is committed to working with its provincial partners and with stakeholders to find a better means of effectively engaging producers in joint management of business risk under CAIS.

This is from the 2005 budget.

But we can really go into the program here. This is the CAIS factsheet.

www.agr.gc.ca...

Now that link will give you all the information you could ever want to know about the program. If you have any questions, check with that thread first. This is a really complicated issue.

Crunching the numbers on payouts is hard, but it can be summarized very easily...

So what is the conspiracy here?

From Parliment
I touched for a moment on the CAIS program. I just want to emphasize how frustrated farmers are with this program. It is not doing the job. We can have a situation where people have lost money every year for the five year period that the formula applies to for the CAIS program and if in the last year they lose less money than they lost the year before they will not trigger a payout. They will be losing money. However, if in four years out of five years they make money and in the last year they lose a little bit of money or make less money they will trigger a payout. It is crazy. We have a situation where people who are in dire economic straits, on the cusp of losing their farm, will not get a payout on this program. It makes absolutely no sense and yet the minister stands in this place and defends the CAIS program.

See how that works? Possibly the worst system they could invent? Or is it? So who picks up that cash? Thats the real question.

Really, how bad could the situation be?

Well hit previous on your parliment pages, or check out this link:

How bad is it?

In 2003 farm incomes went negative for the first time since the 1930s. Interestingly that same year when the CAIS program came in, $1.4 billion was allocated but it still could not be triggered. Even though farmers were in this terrible income crisis, it still would not trigger payouts to all kinds of people who were losing tremendous amounts of money.

Still no payments. Better pray for a few years bad luck to claim. Oh thats right, its now 2006 and the payments are still not getting out.

The government now admits that farmers cannot make money farming alone. (wow thanks for the help? opening up markets would help us)

70 percent of income comes from off the farm.

So where is the conspiracy?

Well where does this billion dollars go? Its near to impossible to trigger a payout. And if you do trigger a payout, in some cases they give you less than what you paid your accountant to crunch the numbers !

People have been getting a few dollars, basically a slap in the face after thousands and thousands of lost dollars.

How can we prove this money is actually fully out there? Who is getting the big payouts? My guess would be massive farm businesses, in the tens of thousands of acres and cattle producers.

But the family farm is dying.

Source

Richard Bianchi was lucky enough to get a decent crop off this year, but the southern Alberta grain grower isn't feeling so lucky.

The settlement cheque he received for malt barley, valued at a little more than $10,000 for just shy of 90 tonnes, is made out in the amount of $0.00.

"Never in my farming history have I received a zero-balance cheque," says Bianchi, 56, who farms three sections in southern Alberta near the Montana border.

That very article continues to talk about record payments from CAIS.

Someone needs to do a study on these payments. Dollar for dollar. Where is this cash going?

Our family has not gotten a payment.

Our neighbours, nothing. They quit farming.

People in the area? Nothing.

As far as I see, its a perfect cover program to hide away some money for something else. Unless every dollar can be accounted for, how can we know?

All I know is that everyone complains about the program, everyone I hear gets nothing from it, and the government touts the program in the cities as the saviour of our producers.

Well its not. Because to quality you have to fail for about 5 years with a consistent loss of income to receive your check for a few dollars.

mod edit: added external linksQuote Reference (review link)


[edit on 12-1-2006 by UK Wizard]

I wonder if anyone reads threads about agriculture.

Its a real shame the issue is overlooked, especially in a conspiracy sense. The stuff is ripe with it.

I read it Dulcimer, I just don't know what to say.

Looks like the Auditor General has yet another program that needs reviewing. :shk:

And this fully reminds me why I should never talk about agriculture on ATS.

Originally posted by Dulcimer
How can we prove this money is actually fully out there? Who is getting the big payouts? My guess would be massive farm businesses, in the tens of thousands of acres and cattle producers.

But the family farm is dying.

Would not surprise me a bit.

I'd look into whether or not the large agro-companies like Monsanto and ADM qualify under the program and how much they are ably to "trigger" in payments from the Government. Maybe try to find some Government statistics, look at corporate annual reports and press releases etc.

The other possibility is that most of it is disappearing into the buraucracy set up to run the program. That's a Canadian specialty.
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