Farm lender launches enviro-audit
Farm Credit Corporation (FCC) wants to know how its customers are treating the environment. Last month, the corporation began the first phase of a mail-in survey involving 60,000 mortgagees nationwide.Mortgage holders like FCC can end up footing the bill for environmental damage done by a landowner. Nevertheless, Richard Fournier, senior FCC environmental officer, insists the current environmental assessment, already underway with about half of FCC's Ontario and Quebec clients, is a public- spirited effort to ensure a clean healthy food supply.
Fournier says times have changed and the corporation needs to be constructive. "For example, it used to be okay to go out in the back yard and bury a pile of tires and now it isn't."
In fact, the first of 11 areas on the assessment form calls for details of anything ever "buried, dumped, stored or disposed of either in or on the land, surface waters or in building(s) on any of the property." Details of livestock operations, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer and wells are sought.
How is FCC going to react when a farmer completing a survey form reveals an unacceptable or illegal environmental situation? "We're not there to police farmers; we're there to help them work out an alternative," Fournier says.
Reaction to date has been "very positive," he says. Three out of five Ontario FCC business units have mailed out the forms. The remaining two will begin the process soon.
The assessment is compulsory for all new loans but Fournier insists it is voluntary for existing borrowers. He describes it as, "a good exercise for everyone."
He says there is no plan yet for dealing with borrowers who don't co- operate. However, actions which have been discussed include farm inspections, farmer interviews and the use of aerial photos.-RI
Names off limits
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture has pulled the plug on plans to use farmer registration refund lists to recruit new members.In August, OFA directors approved a plan, contingent on legal advice, to release to county federations the names of farmers who had requested a refund of the $150 registration fee that must be mailed to one of two provincial general farm organizations.
At an OFA board meeting last month, president Tony Morris told directors that legal counsel had advised the federation to drop the use of refund lists in recruitment drives because it could open the door to a legal challenge under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act and the Farm Registration and Farm Organization Funding Act.
"The people who register and ask for a refund do so willingly, but they have not given permission to have their names used," and it would be inappropriate to pass those names on to a third party, Morris said.
After hearing the legal verdict, directors voted quickly to eliminate the provision that would make the refund list available to local federations.
The board did, however, pass a scaled-down version of "Campaign 10 Plus," a recruitment plan asking each OFA director to recruit 10 new OFA members between December, 1997 and March, 1998. The federation hopes to recruit 860 new members, which would generate an additional $86,000 funding for OFA and $34,000 for county federations.
Even without the use of membership lists, Morris expects farmer registration to continue to swell OFA membership.
For 1997, "we will exceed last year's membership and the refund rate will be the lowest of all time," said a confident Morris, who expects the refund rate to drop to 17 per cent this year, down from 21 per cent in 1994. -BT
BY BERNARD TOBIN
A Bell Telephone plan to improve phone service for rural Ontario has come under attack by urban phone customers who say they don't want to pay higher rates.Under the Bell proposal, which requires Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approval, Bell customers in Toronto face a 70-cent-per-month hike in service fees, while rural residents in areas such as Hensall and Perth will have to pay an extra $4.10 by Jan. 1, 1998.
Farmers will be paying more for local phone service, but will receive extended local calling areas, an end to mileage charges and access to single-party lines, according to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
In return for the hefty rural increase, Bell plans to invest $200 million to complete the second phase of its plan to improve telecommunications service to rural Ontario.
But Bell's urban customers in areas such as Toronto, who will gain a wider toll-free calling radius due to an expanded 905 exchange, don't want another rate hike and have been writing to the CRTC to complain.
Urban people "have been saying they don't want their telephone bill to go up because rural Ontario is getting the major benefits," says Gary Davison, an OFA executive member, who has been part of a rural stakeholders' group lobbying Bell to improve its rural service. "This is now ending up being a rural versus urban issue," he says.
The outcry has prompted the CRTC to invite interested groups to present their arguments for or against the rate hike at a hearing scheduled for Nov. 3 in Ottawa.
Davison, who will make a presentation at the hearing, says he hopes the CRTC will understand the need to upgrade phone service in rural Ontario. "In many cases, the urban folks have the higher levels of service and the rural folks are basically stuck out there without the ability to get the single lines" and must dial long distance to talk to neighbours.
Davison says the lack of vocal support coming from rural Ontario isn't surprising. "If you're going to put somebody's bill up $3 a month, not a whole lot of people are going to jump forward to support it.
"What we've actually negotiated with Bell is still not perfect and it's still not going to solve all the problems," but it could resolve 75 per cent of the issues, Davison says.
If the plan is approved by the CRTC, Bell will eliminate all mileage charges paid by its individual subscribers. About 200,000 Ontario and Quebec Bell customers currently pay mileage charges ranging from 30 cents to $40 monthly, totalling $12 million annually.
Expanded local calling areas should also reduce long distance charges for rural residents. Within two years, Bell promises to expand calling areas for 70 per cent of its customers, including 1.9 million customers in smaller communities who would be able to call regional centres which currently ring up long distance charges.
By 2001, Bell says it will also offer single-party lines to the majority of its 60,000 customers still using four-party line service.