Propaganda
To the Editor:
Recently a booklet entitled “An Act of War” was widely circulated in southeast Saskatchewan and is now flooding Alberta. One must carefully examine many of the statements in this booklet, which gives a very distorted report of the history of the Canadian Wheat Board. I believe William Morris has documented the true heritage of the CWB in his book Chosen Instrument and I appreciated that many farm papers have printed his critique of “An Act of War.” More importantly, we as farmers must question who the authors of this booklet really are.
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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.
Published by the Prairie Center, close investigation finds this is the new name of the Taxpayers Association, or the Canadian Taxpayers Federation or the National Center for the Taxpayer Inc.
Who is this group and more importantly who funds them? Are they funded by the same groups that fund the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, such as the Alberta Government, multinational agribusiness and chemical companies, and quasi-political groups?
Who is paying for the production and distribution of this largely biased and inaccurate document and why are they trying to influence farmers in Alberta at this time? Only a decision by informed Alberta farmers based on fact, not fiction, will be meaningful in how their grain is marketed in the future. …
We also wonder why some would want to destroy the marketing system which has long been the envy of the world and its agricultural producers.
-Terry Hanson,
CWB Advisor,
Fillmore, Sask.
Whose board?
To the Editor:
For any one of you who are thinking about the upcoming Alberta referendum on marketing freedom, I would like to share some of my own experiences with the Canadian Wheat Board. … I wondered why a region which boasts so much wheat had not long become the wheat processing capital of the country (as Kansas is in the U.S.). This spring I found out exactly why this is so.
As a result of increased freight costs on wheat shipped out of the province, our group of Manitoba farmers investigated the possibility of building a flour mill and thereby saving on freight costs while processing our wheat locally.
However, we were quickly told by the Canadian Wheat Board that we would not be allowed to sell wheat directly to our own mill. Instead, we would first have to sell our wheat to the Board and then buy it back at a much higher price, which includes freight costs. We argued that we should not be charged freight costs since we never intended to ship the wheat out of the province. But the Board maintained that its price structure always includes freight costs from export points like Thunder Bay, and that all farmers must pay these costs even if their wheat is eventually used locally and never shipped out of the region.
We started this project because we naively thought that we had the freedom to choose where and how to market our wheat at a price which would allow us to continue growing it profitably. But alas, the only freedom we had was to sell to the Board and then buy back our own wheat at a price which removed any advantages we could have had.
There was no longer any incentive for us to build a producer-owned mill because by having to cover fictitious freight costs we lost our comparative advantage of being close to the resource and were left with little option but to export. One Board official even had the nerve to tell us that we should not be able to sell wheat directly to our mill because the other millers (who must buy from the Board and who are mostly located in eastern Canada) would be upset.
In order to appease some of the growing criticism, the Wheat Board recently announced that farmer-owned mills should be exempt from CWB control, but only if that mill had a daily capacity of around three tonnes a day or less, a minuscule size in today’s industry where capacities in excess of 100 tonnes a day are the norm. Just in whose interest is the Board working here?
The above is only one small example, but real question we should all be asking is this: How many other options and opportunities have we foregone over the decades? How many entrepreneurial ideas have had to succumb to the inflexibility of the Board’s policies? How many others have had their freedom denied? We may never know, but it is not too late for change. We should all think critically about this and ask ourselves whether the status quo is our only option, or whether it is time we had the freedom to decide for ourselves!
– B. Leitgeb,
Headingley, Man.
Dear minister
To the Editor:
Dear Mr. Paszkowski, Minister, Alberta Agriculture: Following a telephone discussion with one of your assistants, and recent publication of your views in the farm papers about the grain marketing plebiscite being held in Alberta, I felt a chill, which had nothing to do with the weather front moving through Manitoba.
It became apparent that, although the method chosen to market grain is an important issue, the more important issue is your government’s apparent contempt for an honest process in making this choice. You seem to support the political process adopted by Mr. Parizeau, Mr. Bouchard and the P.Q. party of Quebec. Are you comfortable with these bedfellows?
It is well known that your government has funded and indoctrinated a number of the organizations which you are “allowing” to involve themselves in the debate on marketing. They have, over the last number of years, been able to spread the message of this indoctrination around to their neighbors, accomplishing to a degree the goal your government originally established. … You seem to fear that the investment in these organizations and your position is threatened by “outsiders” whether or not they have been invited by Albertans to participate.
Is your position so weak that it cannot stand a democratic and rigorous debate?
The similarity between your government and that of the P.Q. government in Quebec in attempting to control the outcome of their referendum is more than a little frightening, from the promotion of selective information and the wording of the plebiscite question to the squelching of information which challenges the government’s view.
As a citizen who believes that all Canadians have a stake in the preservation of the country and therefore a participant in the Montreal rally, I was exposed to the anger of some hard-core separatists with their reference to “outsiders.”
The seeds of fascism seemed to be in a moist environment, already germinating. Do you recognize this in your own government’s approach to the grain marketing plebiscite? Does it trouble you in any way?
Albertans and especially Alberta farmers pride themselves in their independence.
We will soon find out whether this applies only to their resourcefulness or whether it also applies to their ability to think independently and challenge your attempt to stifle informed debate.
I hope you won’t mind if this letter finds its way into the homes of my friends in Alberta. You see Mr. Paszkowski, I too have a stake in the future of the Canadian Wheat Board …
– Bill Toes,
Kane, Man.
Nystrom loss
To the Editor:
It was with interest I read the article from the Leader-Post Oct. 16, entitled “Nystrom wants NDP to Change Process.” Nystrom is bitter about the delegate system which cost him the federal NDP leadership and wants to change it.
It’s hard to feel sorry for the man who represented Yorkton- Melville in the federal NDP riding for over 20 years.
In his tenure he accumulated over $1 million dollars in pension benefits and in my opinion the riding was pitifully represented. The only time we would see Nystrom was generally at election time or when there was some grant to hand out to the senior citizen homes.
I have mixed feelings about Nystrom’s unsuccessful bid for the federal leader’s job.
On one hand I am happy he did not become leader, because of his lackluster record, but on the other hand electing him would surely help lead to a faster NDP demise.
-Ivan Bork,
Hyas, Sask.
Success recipe
To the Editor:
A few words of appreciation to Roy Tweedle of Prince George B.C. for his conclusive and, I am sure, well-researched recipe for success in this business of farming. However, I might suggest to him the time-honored belief that it is far easier to make money in theory than it is in practice.
Having regard for the depressed prices of grain during the past 10 years, it is extremely doubtful if one would have had much success in attracting any renters even at $15 an acre. Admittedly grain prices have picked up some lately, but the sad truth is that we are just getting back to the level that they were in the mid-’70s and as equipment and input costs have been spiraling steadily upwards during these 20 years, a bushel of wheat today in real terms is only worth half of what it was then. As an example of rising costs, we purchased a tractor in 1972 for $17,000. Nine years later we replaced it with another of comparable size. The only difference was air conditioning and rollover protection in the cab, but it cost us $48,000 and this was a discounted price due to it being a discontinued model.
While Tweedle’s prescription contains some alluring aspects, it is not likely to make it into any agricultural economics curriculum, as the current economics wisdom is pretty well convinced that viability increases with size, at least up to a certain level. The advantage of larger holdings with several operators involved, such as a family farm, lie in the fact that there is less duplication of equipment, as opposed to smaller individual operations. As well there is less idle time for the various items, especially in peak periods of seeding and harvest, thereby making better use of the investment. Part of our holdings are in the rented category and are owned by small operators who followed the Tweedle Theory until they couldn’t hang on any longer and asked us to take it on while they disposed of their equipment and found something else to do. It is pretty obvious that the urban, rural situation is like that of “East and West, and ne’er the twain shall meet” and what worries me most is the eventual breakdown of conventional farming and being taken over by corporate interests whose only concern is the bottom line. Then my friend and others like him will soon find out what cheap food really is or was and it won’t be organic either. Is that what you want?
-Philip Lindenback,
Weekes, Sask.
Pork waste
To the Editor:
The Saskatchewan Pork Employment and Investment Initiative is a disgraceful misuse of check-off funds. The research committee of SPI should hang its collective head in shame.
If private producers in this province wish to advertise for Europeans to work in their barns or to purchase them, they are at liberty to contact European journals or periodicals. If they wish to wine and dine European journalists, that is their business. I would much prefer they pay for it themselves and keep their hands out of my pockets, and please don’t insult the pig industry by calling this “research.”
If the research committee of SPI had $10,000 to spare, why did it not use the funds to attract Saskatchewan youth into the industry? Are we to continue to export our children to the oil patch and import Europeans to operate our barns because the “thinkers” of this province are so short-sighted that they cannot see where the solution to the staffing problem lies?
Wake up SPI! Wake up Pork Implementation Team! Wake up University of Saskatchewan! Wake up provincial government! You have all missed a great opportunity for the last 20 years and the demise of the Crow has taught you nothing.
-Bruce R. Owen,
Guernsey, Sask.
Ultimate power
To the Editor:
Mr. Paul Kuric (Oct. 19) has an interesting question – should we or should we not pay the national debt? Maybe both of us did not vote for the Mulroney government, but just the same, we are still responsible in the election of it. In a democracy the minority will suffer or benefit with the majority. Any voter who does not feel responsible for the government elected cannot vote intelligently.
Perhaps that is why the very same people who helped Mulroney into office are so soon again knocking on the doors of parliament disguised as the Reform Party? Too many voters want to separate the election of a government from the action of that government.
The repayment of a country’s debt is covered by international monetary law, which is more powerful than any other power on this planet. The big G7 forced Canada to pay Mexico a $2 billion handout, when our debt is more than six times what Mexico owes. In relation to population our debt is 16 times greater than Mexico’s.
Nothing could rip Canada apart faster than refusing to pay our debt. The international monetary markets would take us apart piece by piece. Only the Big G7 can spare us from paying part or all of that debt. They will do that when hell freezes over!
-Ernest J. Weser,
Laird, Sask.
