By the end of October the seven-year saga of the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency (ALMA) will have ended. Interestingly ALMA started out under a cloud of controversy and is being terminated in similar fashion. Its beginning and demise had one thing in common – entrenched agriculture department senior bureaucrats that never liked the ALMA idea. The main reason being that its creation removed millions of dollars annually out of the Ag department budget along with control over livestock program grants and their direction. Clearly such a situation caused much exasperation to empire-building bureaucrats.
The concept of ALMA arose out of the drama surrounding the never-ending cattle checkoff ordeal. About eight years ago, George Groeneveld, the Ag Minister of the day changed the checkoff from mandatory to refundable. He established ALMA as a means to offset the expected checkoff losses that were used for industry research and development programs. As you might expect, with all the political mischief surrounding the creation of ALMA, it was under much industry suspicion (including from this writer) and had a hard time establishing acceptance and credibility.
It took a couple of years of growing pains, but upon the hiring of Gordon Cove as manager and the establishment of a board of directors composed of highly respected experts and professionals, ALMA blossomed. The agency set high standards of accountability, transparency, governance and industry consultation. They supported and financed development projects and research into livestock industry areas that the Ag department could not even contemplate because of political considerations (mandatory BSE testing in beef marketing being one).
Because of its enlightened actions and vision, ALMA soon found universal support from livestock industry groups – what a huge change from its beginnings. What was also important was that ALMA, over its seven-year history, created thousands of jobs in the processing and research side of the food production sector. I would suggest that there are few government agencies anywhere that are both universally admired and supported and created thousands of jobs. Yes, thousands of jobs, I have the analysis done to come up with the job figures. You would think that such a situation would be boasted about and supported by any job-hungry government. ALMA should be seen as a successful template for other government development and research agencies – but there is more and it's not a pretty story.
The Ag Minister claims that $3 million will be saved by terminating ALMA – that seems more like on paper, rather than an actual saving. The government still plans to administer the program and keep many of the people that are presently working for ALMA, so there is no real big salary savings. There may be some savings in rent and some admin redundancies but all of that could have been covered by reducing the grant to ALMA by $9 million instead of $8 million. Besides, had the Minister actually consulted with the industry, he would have found that they may well have been conducive to contributing to ALMA in order to guarantee its existence. One suspects that any savings from this decision will soon be eaten up by the cost of the ongoing cumbersome Bill 6 consultation meetings which are probably going to cost more than $500,000 and counting, what with all the hired consultants, facilitators, per diems and expenses for over 70 government-appointed participants. But I digress.
From all accounts, government consultation with the industry on ALMA was virtually non-existent. There was to be no compromise – your humble writer was told last December that ALMA was going to be terminated – so the fix was in from the start. So what gives? Well, this may sound familiar; what many folks in the industry suspect is that besides the hostility of department officials towards ALMA, this government is not sympathetic towards producer organizations. Part of that goes back to the government's severe annoyance with last year's Bill 6 protests – they blame producer groups for instigating them.
The Minister has stated that an advisory board will be created to assist government bureaucrats on the direction of the development money being transferred back to the Ag department. I dare say those government folks will soon fall back into old bad habits of doing things their way. I would suggest that with some political insight the government could have avoided terminating a successful agency that actually carried out what they are currently preaching to save our economy that is – diversification and job creation. It all boggles the mind.