Our minister of agriculture for Saskatchewan appears mixed up in a June 16 Regina Leader-Post article.
He states, “the majority of our supporters would like free choice in the Canadian Wheat Board.”
Like our federal minister, he has forgotten that in the most recent vote for wheat board directors, farmers voted to support 80 percent of the directors who support the single desk.
Before that vote the government put a gag order on the board directors. They allowed the Tory members to spend thousands of our dollars sending letters to farmers encouraging them to support free choice. The minister even removed thousands of farmers from the voters’ list.
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Stating the election vote proved farmers want free choice doesn’t add up. The Tories received 40 percent of those that voted. Sixty percent of the population voted, so 24 percent of them voted for the Conservatives. Approximately 50 percent of those voting were urban, leaving about 12 percent for the farm vote.
The law states that any changes to the Canadian Wheat Board must be decided by the farmers, not by the government. Let us support the law. Let the farmers vote to decide what should happen to the CWB and let’s have no more gag orders.
Mr. Premier, get your cabinet in order and don’t encourage the feds to break the law. Let’s have democracy not dictatorship.
Roy Nelson,Regina, Sask.
