PACP Committee News Release
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Standing Committee on Public Accounts |
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Comité permanent des comptes publics |
For immediate release
NEWS RELEASE
AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD CANADA SHOULD ENSURE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS FACING DISASTERS RECEIVE TIMELY ASSISTANCE
Ottawa, November 19, 2014 -
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) needs to work with provinces and territories to make improvements to AgriRecovery in order to ensure that agricultural producers are able to recover from disasters and return to business by receiving timely assistance, according to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts’ report presented today in the House of Commons by Committee Chair David Christopherson.
To help agricultural producers manage risks related to disasters, such as disease, drought and flooding, the federal government, provinces and territories provide assistance through AgriRecovery, which is a cost-shared framework designed to help producers return to business as rapidly as possible.
In its Fall 2013 Report, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released a performance audit that examined AAFC’s management of the federal role in AgriRecovery. While the OAG noted good practices with respect to AgriRecovery—disasters were appropriately assessed against program criteria and communications worked well, the OAG concluded that AAFC did not adequately manage the federal role in providing disaster relief to producers because it had not streamlined its processes for smaller, lower-risk initiatives, nor had it delivered assistance to producers for many disease- and drought-related disasters in a timely manner.
In its report, the Committee notes that two-thirds of AgriRecovery initiatives were delivered within a 10.5-month timeline. Nonetheless, to ensure that improvements are made to AgriRecovery and that agricultural producers facing disasters receive assistance in a timely manner, the Committee recommends that AAFC provide information on its progress in working with provinces and territories to take corrective action to improve timeliness, to collect producers’ views on future AgriRecovery initiatives, to identify measures to streamline its administrative processes and to review AgriRecovery’s performance measures and targets.
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