Ontario budget brings good news to ethanol co-op

05/13/2005

BY MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION
EXPOSITOR STAFF / BRANTFORD

For a local ethanol co-op, working with the concerted programs of two levels of government this week is like a story straight out of a Dickens novel — It's the best of times and the worst of times.

So believed Tom Cox, president of Integrated Grain Processors Co-operative, as he talked Thursday about the 2005 Ontario budget tabled the day before and the increasing instability of the Liberal minority government in Ottawa.

For IGPC, the two events are very connected. At Queen's Park, Finance Minister Greg Sorbara's budget confirmed the Ontario government's commitment to its renewable fuels mandate to achieve by Jan, 1, 2007, five-per-cent ethanol content of all motor vehicle fuel used in the province, and 10 per cent content in gasoline.

But in Ottawa, the prospect of the Liberal government falling in the House of Commons could hold up IGPC's application under the federal ethanol expansion program. That would help finance the $86-million plant it wants to build on the north-west outskirts of Brantford.

BENEFIT FARMERS

Cox had glowing words after hearing the Renewable Fuel Standard announced earlier by the Dalton McGuinty government reconfirmed in the budget.

"By bolstering demand for corn, the plant will benefit all Ontario corn farmers who are struggling with the lowest corn prices in more than a decade," said Cox, who is also a Brant County cash cropper.

IGPC's plant is among a group of pending ethanol facilities in different parts of the province that are trying to get off the ground and into production in time to meet the Ontario government's mandate.

If IGPC's application for federal financing is approved, it would speed up construction of its proposed facility in the Oak Park North business park north of Highway 403.

The co-op submitted its application in February and has been told that word of whether it has cleared the evaluation coming "any day now." As the fortunes of the Paul Martin government become ever more tenuous, though, Cox said he has spoken frequently with federal officials and Brant MP Lloyd St. Amand.

"We're anxious to get word back," said Cox. "Obviously, if the government falls and there's an election, we could be looking at six months to a year before a new government is established."

He said he and the board of directors worry about the prospect that bureaucracy will be paralyzed while waiting for a new government and minister and a confirmation of direction in policy.

"We're quite confident that our application is good. We just don't want it held up by what's going on in Ottawa right now."

IGPC, made up mainly of Brant farmers, community members and other strategic interests, is in the middle of its equity drive aimed at raising up to $43 million from area interests.

When finished, IGPC's plant will be the largest in Ontario. It will use about
12 million bushels of corn a year — six per cent of Ontario's average annual corn production — to process about 125 million litres of ethanol, 96,000 tonnes of dried distillers grains for the livestock feed market and about 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.