Debt load
To the Editor:
While the Ontario teacher’s strike, as also the postal shut-down, caused disruptions for many, for my part I applauded their stand of resisting the relentless and unnecessary erosion of our public service, which we are told is unavoidable in order to deal with the public debt. I disagree.
As recent as 1984 (an election year), we were advised that the debt, including already accrued interest, was $180 billion. And as every finance minister since has steadfastly asserted that their budget overruns were all exclusively the borrowings needed to pay the interest on the debt, it follows that of the $600 billion now owing, that in excess of $420 billion is all just plain interest on interest on more interest, and which last year alone devoured $47 billion, almost as much as one entire health care bill, and I humbly ask why?
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
Of course we are told to have avoided this albatross, we should never have borrowed.
But the initial borrowings were not very large, and for the most part the money was put to good use (…).
But why did we have to lean so heavy on the private sector? We do have the Bank of Canada.(…)
And we made good use of it, first to fight the Depression, and then the war, and by 1945, we had accumulated a debt roughly twice the size of our gross domestic product. Yet over the next 25 years, we were virtually debt-free.
So what was different then from now, where our GDP at $800-plus billion is still a fair bit higher than the debt. Well, we relied more on (the Bank of Canada then) than the mere five percent we do now. Again I ask, why? Do Gordon Thiesen (governor of the Bank of Canada) and his recent predecessors have no pencils to make those ledger entries, like his private counterparts do, from which they regularly boast of such fantastic profits we hear about?
One might wonder if, when the Creator gave this earth its initial spin, He ever had the thought that this world would be the money dominated, greedy one it is now? Recalling how when Christ chased the money changers out of the temple declaring “Ye have made my Father’s House a den of thieves”, surely indicates that such was not the case nor should ever have been.
– Philip Lindenback,
Weekes, Sask.
Pay for mistakes
To the Editor:
In the Jan. 15 issue, your paper ran two articles about barley contaminated with deer droppings. These articles identify a very serious situation which I think warrants further explanation from the Canadian Wheat Board.
Farmers already paid cleaning on these vessels once. Will we pay for the second cleaning? (…)
Ms Allen also implies that this was no fault of the CWB; “total bunk” was how she put it. Yet the CWB is too willing to take all credit for any quality-related benefits in the Canadian system. They even hired two studies (Kraft-Furtan and Schmitz) done in order to portray superior quality as the justification for their monopoly and to give themselves the entire quality premium which Canada’s grain farmers and grain industry have earned.
If the CWB wants to take credit for our quality, they must also take responsibility for screw-ups.
Harry Truman was quoted as saying “The buck stops here.” The CWB is saying “the buck never got here, it stopped and went on the farmer.”
So my question to the CWB is: Were the CWB’s commissioned studies “total bunk” as well? We always believed they were. Our quality premiums are attributable to our farmers, our climate, the Canadian Grain Commission, and the grainhandlers. This incident and the CWB’s abdication of responsibility merely illustrates that truth.
Also relating to comments Ms Allen gave in these two articles, she criticizes the raising and discussion by the Canadian Farm Enterprise Network of these quality problems saying “this is the worst possible way to do business.” It occurs to me that selling grain to one of our most important customers, contaminated with deer feces, and then trying to keep it quiet, might be worse.
Does Ms Allen actually think this was breaking news to anyone other than their captive prairie farmers? The entire grain trade knew of this weeks ago, and are still laughing. The real story here is that the CWB is most upset that, unlike all others who have been co-opted into believing the quality myth, we are prepared to talk about it and ask questions.
As long as farmers have their grain expropriated by the CWB and pay for the mistakes of others, it is our duty to expose all that is rotten within our silly centrally planned, forced-compliance system.
– Bernie Sambrook,
Medora, Man.
Let nature be
To the Editor:
Recently in our Grade Nine science course, our teacher has been talking about organisms and life on earth. I was extremely interested in the fact that when an organism’s habitat changes, the organism adapts to the environment in some way. For example, if a bird builds its nest in a tree and winter comes, the bird then has to adapt to the change of environment and migrate to a warmer place.
I didn’t really understand how humans came into this picture. Sure, we adapt to our environment by building houses for warmth or guns for hunting food, but mostly we pose as a problem for other organisms who have to adapt to us.
Instead of a bird having to adapt to the cold environment, it also has to adapt to people because we cut down their homes (trees) and build houses where their nests were. Therefore they adapt by building their nests on roofs.
This may be hard for them to do, so what right do we have to change their environment or make them have to change in any way?
Another problem I see is that we force species to change drastically by picking certain organisms to reproduce because they have desirable traits, which is a process called artificial selection. Is it really morally right to change a species so much that they look like an entirely different species just to please ourselves?
For example, scientists believe that dogs came from the wolf species and that people bred only the wolves that were friendly to make them more used to people, and then they bred only those that looked the way humans wanted (for example, curly haired wolves eventually looked like poodles do today). Also, scientists only bred wheat plants that had a large number of kernels so that they would produce more seeds, which would mean more food for people.
This could be a negative thing in that all of the wheat plants have similar traits, so if a disease ever inflicted the crops, they most likely wouldn’t survive because all of them have similar traits, and if they don’t have a specific trait used to resist disease, we would lose all of our wheat plants.
If you look at how the dinosaurs handled the environment when they ruled the earth, they didn’t artificially select organisms to breed, and they also didn’t mess with the environment like we do. They just let nature take its course, lived for several thousand years and died accordingly, which is what I think that we should do.
Why do we have to fight nature’s plan so viciously? Why don’t we just go along with the easy flow of the river? It may save us a lot of grief in the future.
When we came along, we thought we were smart enough to make new species and destroy animals’ environments. We have been the cause of some species’ extinction, and although it appears as though we have everything under control, I am worried about the things that we have done. By playing around with organisms and the way that they interact, are we actually destroying life? Maybe we should start thinking of leaving animals alone and accepting them the way that they are.
– Pam Suddaby,
Lavoy, Alta.
