Agriculture and Forestry Minister Eric Hammill said he is pleased the federal government is providing additional funds for farmers facing financial difficulties. Federal agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief has announced that an additional $170 million will be made available by the federal government under the Agriculture Income Disaster Assistance Program (AIDA.)
The AIDA program is also being changed to include negative margins, which is the excess of allowable expenses over allowable sales.
"The changes will have a positive impact on producers who did not get all their losses covered for 1998 due to negative margins," said Mr. Hammill. "It also opens up the program to those producers who did not consider themselves to be eligible before these changes." He said that applications for 1998 which have already been received will be automatically reviewed.
Mr. Hammill said the extension of the program to include negative margins will have less impact in Prince Edward Island than other provinces. "Prince Edward Island was the only province in Canada to cover negative margins through the Agriculture Disaster Insurance Program," he said. "I am pleased that the federal government will now be supplementing payments to new and existing applicants."
Mr. Hammill also welcomed another change to the AIDA program which will allow producers to make a one-time choice for the 1999 tax year to include either the previous three years or three of the previous five years where high and low income years are not counted.
The minister said that previous amendments made to AIDA will also allow for advance payments for the 1999 tax year. Those payments will be based on the changes announced today.
"Officials will be assessing existing applications in light of these changes," said Mr. Hammill.
Under the agriculture disaster programs, upwards of 270 Prince Edward Island producers have qualified for payments totalling just over $6 million.