Mr. Speaker, first of all we should straighten out just how many pages we are talking about. The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville has stated 40 to 50 pages. In actual fact the number of pages for the AIDA form, if the farmer is enrolled in NISA, is seven pages. The rest are instructions. There are an additional five pages if the farmer is non-NISA, with the rest being instructions. The number of pages may be relevant in one way but very irrelevant in another. The actual form is from five to seven pages.
The basic information needed is revenue and expense data filed for income tax purposes for the current year and the preceding three years. Everyone with a farm business has this information already on hand.
This year the tax forms also serve as the NISA application. The forms now fill three functions. They can do their income tax, their NISA and their AIDA. There is a limited amount of supplementary information required for AIDA. The added information relates primarily to the changes in inventories, accounts payable and accounts receivable and is essential to ensuring that the applicant receives the appropriate payment. Let me provide two examples.
First, let us consider a farm which had a major production loss in 1998. The cash receipts will not be down that much because the farmer will be selling the inventory on hand, emptying the barns or the bins. Inventory decline must be reflected in AIDA or the payment will not reflect the true loss.
Second, those in difficulty will leave bills unpaid. This must be reflected to determine the true loss.
Finally, if a producer has an accountant for income tax and NISA, it should not cost too much more to transfer that data to the AIDA application form. The cost of hiring an accountant need not be overly excessive.