Larger- and smaller-scale farmers in Alberta will be able to qualify for disaster recovery programs now that the province expanded the programs’ eligibility criteria.
Retroactive to July 1, the province has lifted its maximum assistance limit for all applicants for disaster relief, and expects to also allow more farms and small businesses to qualify by raising the maximum yearly gross revenue ceiling to $15 million from $5 million.
The province acknowledged that it just introduced the maximum assistance limit of $300,000 a few months ago, but said Friday that it was “concerned that the $300,000 cap could be insufficient to replace damaged property for a small number of residents, small businesses and farms, so we decided to remove the limit entirely.”
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Typically, the province said, “residential applications (for disaster relief) are not as large or complex as those for small businesses and farming operations.”
However, it added, “removing the maximum on assistance will (also) benefit those rare residential applicants who have lost everything.”
The province said Friday it has also lifted a requirement that farmers must get at least of 20 per cent of their gross annual income from the farm business.
Plus, the province said it has ended a restriction which disqualified larger farms that employed more than 20 full-time staff for farming operations.
The changes, the province said, will apply to all “current and future” provincial disaster recovery programs, which are generally meant to assist with uninsurable losses of “essential items” and to help restore property to its “pre-disaster functional condition.”
“Current programs” include the current Southern Alberta Disaster Recovery Program and all other disaster recovery programs for 2010, such as those previously set up for the County of Vermilion River and the City of Cold Lake.
“Inclusive”
The Southern Alberta program, announced in early July, is the province’s response to severe overland flooding from a series of rainstorms across much of the region in mid-June.
“If there are people who did not apply because they didn’t meet the criteria originally, we encourage them to contact us. If you have applied and were not eligible under the previous guidelines, we will contact you,” the province’s municipal affairs minister Hector Goudreau said in Friday’s release.
“As I have said many times, we will keep this program open until all applications are processed,” he said, referring to the Southern Alberta program. “We understand that farmers and business people are busy this time of year and need time to tend to repairs.”
“We want to ensure we are being as inclusive as possible to help those Albertans who have incurred uninsurable losses due to severe weather events across the province,” the government said in its release.
“With this in mind, we do not want to wait until the program has closed to make these important changes.”
