Friday 13

[farmers_son]

with regard to using an accountant to fill out CAIS forms, I have mentioned this before, one fellow I know was told by his accountant that he would get nothing in the way of CAIS payments so he filled out his own information and sent it off. He received a check for $6000.00, and promptly found a new accountant !

[grassfarmer]

BWC, You make an important mistake in your argument one that is critical to this debate. The UK introduced it's first feed ban in the late 80s which was sloppy and not enforced - it was not until 1996 and a total market collapse that they went back and implemented a proper feed ban. So Canada is not the first country to have had cases since introducing a feed ban and is hence in a better position in the "eyes of the world" than you reckon. Post ban cases have occured all over Europe giving weight to the argument that MBM in feed is either not the cause, or more likely, not the only cause of BSE.

Farmers_son, I share your concerns over the possible loss of boxed beef sales that would be a real disaster. As far as CAIS goes I don't like the program, I came here to farm in a non- subsidy atmosphere and it is not turning out to be that way. Having said that you have to work with whatever programs are in place and CAIS is it for now. Personally the droughts of 2002 and 2003 cost me substantially more than BSE has cost me and I think that is reflected in the large 2003 CAIS payout I received.

Emrald1, As I mentioned a while back my accountant was warning people not to spend their payments too quickly as the Alberta Government cut a lot of cheques in late April before they had actually done the paperwork on the CAIS applications. There is a good chance many of these payments will be clawed back. I hope that wasn't what your friend received, I know my payment came to around $6000 more than the accountant reckoned I was due so I am partly expecting to have to repay around that sum.

[grassfarmer]

CAIS certainly doesn't give a person any security, and it sounds like our Premier has indicated that he thinks it will be two years before the border opens, of course the AAFRD Minister pointed out that it was speculation.

[cowman]

I never got anything from CAIS and the accountant never beat me up too bad! Just another government rip off in my opinion. Sort of like the old Canada Pension plan or the RRSP schemes!
But I have to admit all these various schemes do keep a small army of people working busy as bees! Why if we didn't have the government employing all these people they might have to get a real job and actually produce something!
I often have pondered how much money must be spent on all the government jobs including all the so-called private corporations that have only government largesse for their bread and butter? Or businesses that cater to the rules and regulations that other businesses are forced to adhere to by the government?
I suspect that about one third of the Canadian workforce is employed either directly or indirectly by the government, but I have no figures to back that up.
If the day ever came when we could eliminate about half those jobs right off the top would things be better or worse?

[farmers_son]

According to Stats Can. 824,000 people are employed in the public administration sector out of a workforce of 16 million or a little over 5%. 324,000 are employed in agriculture, 2%. That is more people than are employed in the fishing, oil and gas, forestry and mining sectors combined. Of Canada's goods producing sectors, agriculture is the third largest employer, following manufacturing and construction. Only 25% of Canada's workforce is employed in the goods producing sector, the rest or 12 million work in the services sector. In the service sector 17% of the total workforce are employed in education or the health fields, a significant portion of which could be thought of as working indirectly for government.

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/econ40.htm

[whiteface]

Interesting statistics farmers-son, thank you! Have a good day all!

[BWC]

Point well taken on the feed ban , and thank you for the correction. I attended a meeting the other day about dealing with the large quantities of OTM beef we have. To quote one of our industries most knowledgeable minds in the beef exporting feild " the world looks upon our feed ban as a joke" now that raises some serious concerns in my mind. It is also an interesting point that he spoke of the need for our federal regulators to immediately get pen in hand and develop testing for market access agreements made with Japan.... if you had mentioned any kind of testing to his or other industry groeps a year ago you would have been looked upon as an alien.

[greybeard]

What those statistics say is that for every 20 of us taxpayers the Government has hired one civil-servant to watch over us. And we complain about paying accountants! Sometime I'm like Grassfarmer and think about looking for somewhere with less government involvement.
But like the saying goes; be carefull what you ask for, you not like it when you get it.