Suspicious incentives
Ten years ago, I was billed about $8 per ton at my local wooden elevator.
The woodens have now been replaced with efficient high throughput concrete elevators with hundred carload outs. You will be better off I was told, it will be more efficient.
Now I pay $14 per ton at the concretes. Ten years ago a new way of setting freight rates using a revenue cap formula was introduced and again I was told, “you will be better off, because the railways will be more efficient.”
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According to the Producer Car Shippers of Canada, the railways are using this fancy revenue cap formula to charge me an extra $8 per ton freight in order to pay an $8 per ton incentive to these efficient concretes.
Let’s do some calculating. For elevating my grain, the companies are charging me $6 more than before and, thanks to this revenue cap formula, they are also getting an additional $8 of my money from the railways.
That adds up to an extra $14 of income. The grain companies are then offering me some of my own money back in the form of $10 trucking incentive so I can pay $12 to a commercial trucker to haul my grain to a concrete. Grain companies win, railways win, and I lose.
It is just as I have always suspected. These trucking incentives are too good to be true. What a scam.
Don Dutchak,
Rama, Sask.
Land opportunity
My apologies to any veterans and their families who I may have inadvertently offended by suggesting that Canadian veterans were given farms as reward for their military service (Open Forum, Dec. 10.)
I know these veterans had to pay for this land. What they were given was the opportunity to purchase farmland with lengthy repayment terms and favourable interest rates.
My words were not well chosen, but the thought behind them remains the same.
The Canadian livestock industry is in trouble. It is all too easy to cite examples of what is wrong. What we need are workable plans that will lead to positive change, before the family livestock operation becomes a footnote in the history books.
Kerry Arksey,
Langruth, Man.
Voting process
Recently Darroll Wallin (Open Forum, March 11), a well known Saskatchewan Canadian Wheat Board opponent, made a mockery of a hypothetical federal election process whereby the Liberals made the ballots, sent them out to voters, stored them and then counted them without credible scrutineers. He then ridiculed the obvious outcome, a Liberal majority.
What he has described is not a fictitious event, but rather, the federal government’s barley plebiscite. The federal government developed the voters list, printed the ballots, stored them and then counted them.
In fact, the federal government had to delay the printing of the ballots to get them right , having three choices and then combining results to get their required result.
Thus it would appear that even anti-CWB farmers don’t believe the results of the barley plebiscite.
Victor Berezowski,
Saskatoon, Sask.
Smarter than 4-year-old?
A four-year-old child knows when it goes into the candy store (that) the more money in its hands, the more it can buy.
As adults, we know governments pay for many necessary things, pension plans, social assistance and medical care. They are involved in upgrades to hospitals, funding education even to the university level, building and fixing roads and helping the disadvantaged.
In Saskatchewan’s case, governments are expected to help build a domed stadium.
In the mail there are pamphlets from David Anderson, MP for Cypress Hills-Grasslands. Every pamphlet says the Conservatives are cutting taxes.
A four-year-old realizes that the less money a parent gives a child, the less candy he can buy. When we think about it, by cutting taxes with all the demands for money we place on governments, Conservatives show they do not have the mental ability of four-year-olds. Do we want three-year-olds running the country?
Lorne Jackson,
Riverhurst, Sask.
Not farmers’ fault
Re: Feb. 25 article, “Green party critic wants Canadians to eat less meat.” The title got me all riled up. What could this article possibly be claiming? That we should all convert to vegetarianism? This radicalism may be the norm for Greenpeace but I did not expect to find this in the company of the Green party.
As I read further, however, I noticed that this was not the intent of the article at all. The title was just a well-played attention grabber that proceeded to open our eyes to many issues surrounding large-scale livestock operations.
I agree with concerns about animal welfare in agriculture and that our society would be healthier if we cut back on eating so much meat. And I’ll even give the benefit of the doubt that the source is correct in claiming that “livestock account for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transport industry combined”.
What I did not agree with was the tendency to antagonize the farmers and ranchers. They, too, are victims. In a world that has seen rapid globalization of markets and trade, ranchers realize that greater profitability lies in the development of large-scale operations feeding into supermarkets.
But this productivist mentality has led to a farm crisis, wherein farm debt is increasing, farm income is decreasing and we are seeing a rapid depopulation of rural communities.
Ranchers are trying to stay afloat, with the government tossing them a ring buoy in the form of a subsidy every now and then. It is not sustainable. But let us be careful and blame globalization, and not farmers, for this mess.
Meaghan Dunn,
Winfield, Alta.
Inattentive MPs
Thanks to the president of Grain Growers of Canada for jerking the leash of MPs on the House of Commons agriculture committee.
MPs as a group have short attention spans and no qualms about disrespecting or ignoring constituents.
Case in point: Today I am watching CPAC as the minister of foreign affairs appeared before the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan March 25.
I don’t know who the people might be sitting behind the minister or behind the committee members but many, if not most of them, steadily look at their laps and many rivet their attention on something in their right hand. A Blackberry? One young woman raised her eyes only when a new speaker took over.
That was followed by the Standing Committee on Official Languages. While a Native man spoke, every other seat visible was empty.
And for this inattention each committee member present receives a handsome salary.
M. Claudette Sandecki,
Terrace, B.C.
