Carleton-Mississippi Mills MPP Jack MacLaren’s office says Agricorp, an Ontario government agency that provides risk management programs for farmers, began sending the letters to Ontario farmers in April. MacLaren, a farmer, received a letter himself.
A news release from MacLaren’s office says the letters asked farmers to pay back money given to them by Agricorp from 2003 onwards to help them survive the turmoil caused by bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as BSSE or mad cow disease.
After a number of BSE cases in Canada, the United States closed the border to Canadian cattle imports from May 2003 to June 2005, reportedly costing the Canadian beef industry $5.7 billion.
Tom Black, an Ottawa-area beef farmer, says the Ontario government sent money installments to farmers during and after the BSE crisis. He said he was under the impression that the cheques were grants because farmers were instructed to show the money as income on their T4 income-tax slips.
Black said he had no idea Agricorp, the farmer insurance group he paid into, would turn around seven years later and ask for repayment of more than $20,000 of the $21,000 it paid him from 2005 to 2006. He said farmers had been asked to repay anywhere from $500 to $100,000 to Agricorp.
The letter Black received from Agricorp on May 8 listed four possible reasons for the overpayments: “Overpayments may occur as a result of incomplete program application, processing errors, changes to farm operations and the nature of programs that provide advance payments for producers in financial distress.”
Black said he believed the error was made by Agricorp because it was highly unlikely that thousands of farmers made the same mistake applying for farmer risk-management programs.
“Forty-five hundred guys didn’t make the same mistake obviously,” Black said. “(Agricorp) said there was an error. They didn’t said what.”
Terrance Green, an Ottawa-based lawyer, said that, based on documents he had seen from farmers who received the recent letters, Agricorp’s actions did not seem right. He said there was a provincial limitation on civil action dating back more than two years, and the Canada Revenue Agency could only go back seven years on federal tax assessments.
“My knee-jerk reaction … is that (Agricorp is) out of time,” Green said. “If they want to go back into a program, they have an obligation to at least give the farmer all the information respecting what and why they are clawing back.”
Green said recent overpayments by Agricorp demonstrated — for everyone, not just farmers — the importance of keeping all receipts going back seven years.
“People really need to look at the records instead of just grabbing a cheque book and writing a cheque,” Green said. “For some farmers it’s in excess of $100,000, while for others it’s just under $1,000. Why such vast differences?”
Black said he won’t be writing a cheque for Agricorp anytime soon.
“I’m not going to pay it back because it’s out of date,” Black said. “Be careful what you ask for. (Agricorp is) going to give it you with one arm and take it back with the other.”
According to Agricorp’s website, farmers must pay back the “outstanding balance” within three years in an effort to help the Ontario government eliminate the provincial deficit and protect “services such as health and education.”
“Agricorp will continue to work with customers to establish repayment plans that meet all debt-repayment requirements while minimizing any undue financial hardship,” Agricorp spokeswoman Stephanie Charest said Tuesday.
According to Agricorp, farmers have three options for repayments: pay the amount in full by Dec. 31; pay the outstanding balance in instalments; or continue to apply for future program payments to cover the amount owed. As of January 2013, interest will accrue on all debts owing to the Crown, Agricorp’s website said.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: MICHELLE ZILIO
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