Beef budgeting
As a solution to the mad cow crisis, I propose the following: that the federal government announce that it will, for at least five years, annually spend $2 billion of its foreign aid budget buying Canadian beef for shipment to the starving overseas.
This would create an instant alternative market for Canadian beef, cost the taxpayers no additional money and feed the hungry.
– Jim Bradley,
Lethbridge, Alta.
Free trade joke
The question is, when will the United States open the border?
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They are playing politics with it. Canada has to challenge the U.S. under the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada.
They used BSE as an excuse. We know our cattle are safe. The U.S. agriculture department also said it was safe.
They tried to stop the lumber industry, tried to stop the wheat board from selling in the U.S., yet I live on a highway and lots of days I see 30 B trains hauling grain into Canada to our elevators.
I tried to sell malt barley to their elevators and three elevators refused it because I was Canadian. Also tried to sell rye and (they) would not buy from me.
We must play hardball and stop U.S. goods to Canada. Also, stop Japan from bringing in goods to Canada – cars and TVs. They refuse our meat.
President (George) Bush would open the border but he is afraid because the senators down there want to keep it closed because the farmers are pressuring them to keep it closed as they have the highest price for cattle in their lives. …
The Americans want free trade one way. They have had the wheat board to court nine times and we won. It’s time to play hardball. The U.S. has sold billions of dollars worth of machinery to Canada. The border will not open.
We must build plants, kill our own cattle and go after the world markets, like some of the markets from the U.S.
If we don’t, there will be no cattle industry left. Cattle prices are down 60 percent and packers are making a fortune.
– Jack Pawich,
Cartwright, Man.
Wishy-washies
Recently, I ordered a flagpole from what I’m sure is a Canadian company. Now, some years ago Canada Post decided Waseca didn’t need full postal service and although we can post and receive letters there, we can’t post parcels and incoming parcels have to be picked up at the Credit Union.
So, one day two weeks ago I had a parcel card in the mail and went to collect it. It was the flagpole in a box and that box was literally decorated with the flag of the United States. I made some remark about it and took the box out to put into the truck.
I went back into the Credit Union for business reasons, muttering, “can’t even make a bloody flagpole in this country!”
By then the teller was trying to hide her giggles – but it’s not the first time I’ve made a teller giggle.
And included in the instructions to put the pole together were the days on which the U.S. flag should be flown: July 4, Lincoln’s birthday and so on – and then: Christmas day and Easter day. That struck me as odd. The birth and death of the Prince of Peace … somehow it doesn’t fit.
Well, some Canadians don’t care. There are people who, when told that we could lose our famous old Hudson’s Bay Company to a U.S. conglomerate, say that it doesn’t matter as it was started by the British.
I’m still trying to find the logic of that. (It could have been started by the French, or by the Vikings if they’d stuck around.) No matter who started it, it is and could be nothing but a Canadian-styled company.
We use the English style of Parliament, I’m writing this in English. I suppose we should get rid of all that.
Canadians seem too wishy-washy to keep anything, even though we pay for that attitude time and time again.
For those who want to get rid of the wheat board and those wishy-washy Canadians who would let them, I wish I could quote from an old clipping. I was checking the information on that clipping and turned it over. There were quotations from both politicans and some landowners telling us that once the Crowsnest freight rate was scrapped we would, so to speak, be living in a perfect world.
I’ve misplaced that clipping, else I would name names because all the wonderful things those people predicted have never happened.
Meanwhile, I’ve painted that flagpole a different colour and taken the garish box to the recycle.
– C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
Trade appeasement
The recent decision by the Canadian government to effectively negotiate the end of the Canadian Wheat Board and supply management so they could sign on to the World Trade Organization agreement in Geneva is simply appeasement.
The Liberals and their friends in big business want to ignore the dysfunctional global agricultural marketplace. The vain hope of “improving market access” and lowering U.S. and European Union agricultural subsidies somewhere over the rainbow allows them to do so, at least for a while.
If you look at history, it is hardly a shocker that the Liberals went to Geneva and gave up the CWB’s initial pool guarantees even after former and current CWB ministers Ralph Goodale and Reg Alcock made election promises to support the CWB.
Not only are these guarantees not trade distorting, they were given up, while U.S. and E.U. subsidies, as many analysts now point out, will actually be increased under the new WTO agreement. …
Today’s Liberals need to learn from history and stop appeasing Europe and the U.S.
Canadian farmers need to understand that these appeasers, whether they be from the government of Alberta, the Liberal party or corporate funded right-wing think-tanks, will not defend their interests.
Speaking of think-tanks, in the August 12, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, even the chief economist for the Canada West Foundation conceded: “Without doubt, the board . . . does command premium prices.”
Why should Canadian farmers give that up? There is no evidence that ending U.S. and E.U. subsidies, if it ever happens at all, will raise prices for Canadian farmers.
We need to learn from history and keep and expand our made-in-Canada agricultural institutions, including the Canadian Wheat Board and supply management. We need to remember that appeasement never works.
– Ken Larsen,
Benalto, Alta.
CWD research
The Aug. 12 Western Producer reported that Saskatchewan provincial authorities are recommending a cull of the wild deer in specific areas of the province because chronic wasting disease has shown up in penned deer herds in those land areas and some fewer cases in nearby wild deer.
Before such a decision becomes irrevocable, the authorities need to know about the new research findings in regard to the development of multiple sclerosis in the human population.
Chronic wasting disease in wildlife and multiple sclerosis are extremely similar and it’s been very recently discovered that MS researchers have wasted decades of time focusing on the belief that the immune system attacks the cells that protect nerve fibres.
It has now been learned that these cells die from some unknown cause and later the immune system sends in the cleanup squad to clean away the dead material, leaving nerve fibres vulnerable to damage and scarring.
Dr. Royal Lee of Standard Process Laboratories reports in a recent article that there is growing evidence that deficiencies in the vitamin E complex are vitally involved in MS.
The vitamin E complex is most abundant in young, vigorously growing plants.
The fact that CWD outbreaks are occurring in specific land areas suggests that there is an environmental cause – something in the soil, vegetation or coming in with the winds that may distort an important nutrient or acting more directly may cause the death of certain cells that fill an important function in the body.
Impatient people want simple quick answers – that A causes B – not that it takes A, B, C and D to cause a mysterious disease; perhaps that an airborne pollutant affects plant cells that in turn affect animal health?
Much more research needs to be done before there’s a wholesale slaughter of the wild deer.
– Ellen Francis,
Silver, Man.
