Terrorist threat
As a member of the British Commonwealth, Canada, I joined the struggle against Nazi Germany in the fall of 1939.
In the fall of 1942, I was waiting to be sent on my way overseas, along with several from Kingston signals training centre, when on short notice we were called to go to Bowmanville where there was some disturbance in a prisoner of war camp.
We were supplied rifles with bayonets and loaded in trucks for about a two hour ride to the camp. We didn’t see any real action but we did get to see some of the German POWs.
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Some were officers, captured in the North African campaign. … These POWs appeared to be treated quite well and we heard no complaints.
They were very far away from their homeland but as for Europeans, they were not much different than Canadians at that time and unlike today they were not considered to be terrorists or suicide bombers.
Now, some 70 years later, things are different. In Afghanistan, a soldier faces a very different situation than we did in the Second World War, where we had a clearly distinguished enemy and usually defined battle lines. Now it seems our troops can never be sure who is friend or foe, or who might be a suicide bomber or where an improvised explosive device might lie.
The Canadians and British have a good reputation for treating POWs humanely, but could a safe and satisfactory detainee or POW camp be built in Afghanistan? At what cost in extra personal and material costs?
As for a camp here in Canada, this might solve the torture debate, but how could we be sure that we wouldn’t be harbouring terrorists? I’m sure Harper or the U.S.A. wouldn’t want to take that chance.
Lester Jorgenson,
Abbey, Sask.
Time for action
Earlier this year, CN Rail announced that they would start delisting 52 producer car loading sites across the Prairies as early as January.
These sites allow farmers to load their grain much closer to their point of operation, saving from $1,000 to $2,000 on the cost of handling and transporting grain for each car, not to mention the savings in time.
Furthermore, since CN Rail does not have to actively maintain these sites, they cost relatively little to maintain. But if nothing is done soon, CN will no longer pick up grain at these sites.
As the producer car delisting date looms closer, our provincial government sits idly by, doing nothing to protect the farmers who will be hurt the most. Unfortunately, this lack of action is simply the latest example of this government’s neglect of the agriculture industry.
First, they abandoned the hog industry as prices plummeted. Then they turned their back on cattle producers facing closed markets, a high dollar, increasing feed costs and growing transportation costs.
Now, they are doing nothing to help grain farmers. It’s about time for the Wall government to start supporting the agriculture sector.
(Saskatchewan) minister of agriculture Bob Bjornerud was full of talk when he took office. He told us all that the federal government would be shaking in their boots when he got to Ottawa. But since then, we haven’t seen him deliver any results for farmers in Saskatchewan.
It’s time for the Wall government to start acting as an advocate for the farmers who need their support the most. It’s time for the Wall government to stop taking rural Saskatchewan for granted.
The Wall government has an opportunity to show their support in a tangible way by fighting to protect our producer car loading sites, but they need to do it before it is too late.
Dwain Lingenfelter,
Leader of the Official Opposition,
NDP Agriculture Critic,
Regina, Sask.
Calves that whistle
We had a state of the art beef and ranching industry before the introduction of BSE. That all went the way of the dinosaur from 2003 until the present.
To add insult to injury, the cow-calf producers are taking less for our own calves eight years after BSE than we received in the first years after BSE. This is due to the cattle industry turned into a monopoly, along with all the help we have accumulated from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.
Our calves now walk around with (so many) holes in their ears that they whistle in the wind when they run.
All this tagging is at the cost of the primary producer. We don’t have a working slaughter plant in Saskatchewan and when the plant was operating, they didn’t want the small operator. They frowned at farms selling a half dozen or so. They wanted a full trailer load from one owner.
Seems they still could not segregate small numbers. Just not enough ear tags?
It seems Canada has to become a Third World nation with lots of CEOs. Then all will be well. We have lost the logging industry and Big Sky Pork is in intensive care. What next? But remember we had gobs of cash to help the auto industry.
We can hope that things will change for the better and we have to do all we can ourselves to promote life down on the farm, while they’re shutting Western Canada down.
Bernard Dease,
Archerwill, Sask.
Rebuttal to Lind
I question your choice of Mr. Christopher Lind as Canadians’ moral compass – Mr. Lind, who is ashamed of Canada because Canada did not follow the lead of the fraudsters of East Anglia University and the hucksters that perpetrated the biggest hoax in temperature reporting history (and) ashamed that Canada didn’t knuckle under to a bunch of shake-down artists that were gathered in Copenhagen….
Then Mr. Lind suggests that we should heed the words of a British journalist who said that we should tax carbon dioxide, a gas essential to all life both plant and animal, on earth – a British journalist whose ancestors taxed salt in India and made it a crime for the people of India to evaporate their own.
That’s morality that we can all aspire to, I am sure. Where was this journalist’s concern about carbon dioxide production when Canada sacrificed men and material to come to Britain’s aid in world wars?
Mr. Lind then takes a swipe at Alberta’s oil sands, oil sands that cover a fraction of the area of the greater Toronto area. Oil sands that are continually being restored to their original condition.
The greater Toronto area is covering some of the most productive land in Canada and there is no plan to restore it to its original condition.
The greater Toronto area and the Golden Horseshoe emit more carbon dioxide than the province of Alberta. If a carbon tax is imposed, then Mr. Lind better petition governments to apply it to the consumption of petroleum products and not on their production.
If the world is in such peril, then he should petition to stop pro sports, Olympics and all non-essential road and air travel. Also to compare Canada to China and India, well, move Beijing and New Delhi to the Arctic Circle and Canada to India’s place. Then see what happens….
The prairie provinces sequester a million times more carbon than they produce and feed the world’s hungry while doing it. …
What kind of morality does the Toronto School of Theology teach? The morality of Christians that champion the rights and worth of individuals or the morality of despots that enslave their own people?
Murray McMillan,
Arcola, Sask.
CWB & democracy
Most farmers would agree the Canadian Wheat Board is a business enterprise concerned with marketing wheat and barley. The CWB is definitely not a government unit for which democratic processes would apply.
Hence, democratic decisions about its future are a misplaced concept.
Having malt barley and milling wheat confiscated by the CWB as soon as the grain hits the bin is fundamentally wrong. This violation of individual rights to properties is an aberration in Canada, especially considering that such a practice happens only in Western Canada.
The Harper government has dragged its feet for years on this issue. The solution can be found through a review of the voting procedure for CWB directors.
At annual general meetings of publicly traded enterprises, voting rights are based on individual holdings of shareholders. Grain producers are de facto shareholders of the CWB.
Make voting rights for CWB director elections proportional to volume of grain delivered to the CWB. After all, the benefits or drawbacks of the CWB for a farmer are a function of tonnage of grain delivered.
The government executive council has the power to amend voting procedure relative to the CWB. Farmers with interests in marketing their crops are tired to be viewed as peasants unable to taking care of their own businesses.
Marketing tools are there to manage our own grain properties.
F. Messier,
Saskatoon, Sask.
Need feed
It has come to my attention that there is a certain number of farmers and ranchers who are short of feed.
I would encourage anyone who has any extra hay or greenfeed to advertise it, whether it is top quality or a few bales left on the back 40 or older hay.
I’m sure someone would be interested in it. Poorer feed can be mixed with better stuff.
We wouldn’t want to see any livestock go hungry this winter. We are, however, responsible for our own transactions.
Mitchell Wlock,
Yorkton, Sask.
