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16 THE RURAL VOICE
Ellicott told the tribunal, all farmers
in an area should have the same rain
gauge.
EIlicott's most meticulous
detective work, however, went
into examining temperature
records. Various farmers had kept
their crop insurance final reports over
ten years and Ellicott went back over
weather records, working backward
from 1999 and mapping out every
maximum temperature claimed by
Agricorp and comparing it to the
temperature for the same day
recorded by Environment Canada for
the same weather station. She began
to notice some dates where there
were major discrepancies in the
Environment Canada statistics versus
the Agricorp figures and began to
wonder why.
She found the answer in the
procedures given to weather
recorders. There are two
measurements taken a day, one at 8
a.m. and one at 6 p.m. The weather
stations have thermometers which
stay at the maximum temperature
recorded since the last time they were
measured and the mercury shaken
down again. Therefore if a high
temperature was recorded after 6 p.m.
at night, and the temperature dropped
overnight, the maximum temperature
recorded at 8 a.m. the next morning
could actually have been recorded the
previous evening. A cool day could,
using this raw data, actually be said
to be a warm day if the weather
changed overnight.
Environment Canada eventually
refines its data to give a more
accurate record of what is the high
and low temperature each day but
Agricorp's figures were based on the
raw data prior to 2000, Husseinali
Shivji, Agricorp Crop Insurance
Commodity Specialist told the
tribunal.
"If we have rain, sunshine and
temperature the plant will grow,"
Ellicott says. If it didn't rain or the
temperature wasn't high enough to
stimulate growth, the plants won't
produce. "So having the right data is
critical."
Based on the weather data she had
received, Ellicott approached Dr.
Murray Brown, the retired Agricorp
official who had originally created
the computer simulation program.
He ran the computer model based on
her figures and estimated she should
have received 65-70 per cent of her
normal yield (she calculated she'd
received 66 per cent).
Furthermore, Ellicott says, Brown
said Agricorp uses all kinds of things
in its simulation that were never a
part of the original simulation.
Even before the tribunal hearing,
many of these arguments had been
put before top-ranking OMAFRA and
Agricorp officials. A meeting was
arranged on March 23, 2000 between
the Grey -Bruce group and Norris
Hoag, the OMAFRA deputy minister
at the time, George Sutton, then
general manager of Agricorp and
other top officials with the two
government bodies. The group came
away without the answers they
sought and so turned to the appeal
process.
In preparing for the tribunal
meeting Ellicott did her usual
thorough job of researching what the
ground rules were. Tribunal staff told
her the panel would not consider
complaints about the effectiveness of
the computer simulation itself, she
says, because it was part of the basics
of the system.
"We were told that if we could
bring evidence that either incorrect
data was used (in the simulation) or
incorrect methods of obtaining data
were used, then we fell within the
parameters of the tribunal," she says.
"In ouropinion we brought that
evidence."
The tribunal panel, headed by
Vice -Chair John Taylor, didn't
agree, however. In his finding
handed down on June 11, 2001,
Taylor agreed that the fact Agricorp
had continued to identify the Paisley
weather station as a base long after it
had closed was a breach of contract,
but argued "Agricorp administered
the plan consistent with the
explanation given to clients at the
time the plan was purchased and as
explained by the Agricorp Sales
Representative and published leaflet
and brochure.
"When an error was found,
Agricorp took steps to correct it and
did not request a refund for any
monies overpaid on claims.
"The administration of the plan for
the Grey/Bruce group of appellants
was no different than for other clients
in Ontario."
It's that last statement that angers