Type of minister
After reading this article (April 12 editorial) and others previous, it leaves me wondering what sort of agricultural minister does Canada have? I thought that he was supposed to stand up for what is best for the farming community but it seems he only needs his paycheque.
I was raised on a farm but now have a different job. I still keep in close touch with my brother who is still farming and I must say it is a sad state of affairs.
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Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
All the farmers I have talked to are not very optimistic about any of the crop prices or the high prices for fertilizer and diesel fuel, and I can’t say I blame them.
If Vanclief is so ready to get some of these farmers into the workforce, is he also going to guarantee them a job and at least a salary that is not below the poverty level?
It almost seems as though he would rather see them on welfare than on a tractor farming. It seems that he wants farming to be only big business but I think that is wrong, it is a business but it is also a lifestyle.
I wonder now if $75,000 is the level he puts as a minimum, how much will it be in 10 years? If his gross income was less than $40,000, would he quit to take a job that paid $6 per hour because he was not making enough as agriculture minister?
I think not, he would complain to get a raise.
I feel that that is all the farmers are doing, is asking what is due to them. Does he expect that the farmers should take losing money, because of the government regulated prices, laying down?
I think that he should think about disbanding the CWB as it pertains only to the West anyway. This would level out the playing field a bit, I think.
I suppose they would never think of doing that though because they would not know if they (CWB) could get enough of the wheat and oilseeds that they need for export to other countries.
It would be terrible if they actually had to pay full market value to the farmers for the products they produce. It would work out the best for the farmers because then at least they would have some control over the price they get for their produce. …
– Kent LaCoste,
Weyburn, Sask.
Fight for board
We Canadian Wheat Board supporters are running out of steam. The anti-Board bloc seems to have an endless supply of gas. Their writers never tire of insulting the wheat board and the farmers who prefer wheat board monopoly over wheat board anarchy.
Many years ago the multinationals made a dollar on every bushel of grain they sold. Bunge, Dreyfuss, etc. became billionaires. Can you blame them for hating the wheat board? The speculators and schemers are fuming.
If today’s multinationals had to do the work of the wheat board – gathering grain, selling, exporting, collecting, grading, contracting, interim payments, final payments, advances, they would want $2 per bushel.
So how do we defend ourselves from these artful dodgers?
Maybe some genetic manipulation could make us resistant to this scourge. For sure if we ever weaken, that will be the end of socially responsible free enterprise and socially responsible democracy.
– Merlin Wozniak,
Wanham, Alta.
Big impediment
In an interview published in the National Post on May 22, Minister (Ralph) Goodale claimed to be encouraging farmers to diversify away from growing wheat and claimed he has promoted the development of farmer-owned pasta and ethanol plants in rural Canada.
Give me a break. The biggest impediment to increased diversification and the development of value-added processing in Western Canada is Minister Goodale himself.
Ralph Goodale is the Minister responsible for the CWB Act and he has the authority and duty to ensure that value-added processing is encouraged. Yet it was Minister Goodale, along with his CWB, that blocked the building of a farmer-owned and operated pasta plant in Saskatchewan.
Contrary to the Minister’s claims, the CWB Act is also blocking ethanol development. Many food products could be manufactured in conjunction with the production of ethanol.
However, if anyone attempts to market the food byproducts of the ethanol process, they are confronted with the CWB’s marketing monopoly and the necessity to purchase their grain through the CWB.
Once again farmers are being prevented from processing their own grain and potential projects have been abandoned because of the increased costs associated with the CWB’s bureaucracy.
The burgeoning organic industry is also being obstructed by Minister Goodale. The Official Opposition has repeatedly used question period to demand that Minister Goodale change his policies toward organic producers. We have given him many specific examples of how his policies are blocking farmers’ ability to process and market their wheat and barley.
To date, the Minister has refused to recant on his blind support for the CWB’s monopoly.
All producers of wheat and barley, not just organic growers, need to have marketing choice. If Minister Goodale actually listened to the leaders in the agriculture community, he might actually have some small basis for his claims to support diversification and value-added processing.
– Howard Hilstrom,
Chief Agriculture Critic,
Canadian Alliance,
Ottawa, Ont.
A last challenge
No doubt your readers are growing weary of Western Barley Growers Association President Albert Wagner’s correspondence with me in your pages.
However, Mr. Wagner’s manipulation of my comments in an attempt to confirm the allegations he makes in his letter of May 17 must be challenged.
Rather than avoiding his accusation that the CWB was not negotiating with the Western Grain Elevator Association in good faith, my April 12 letter clearly states that the CWB is negotiating in good faith but will not reopen issues long settled by government policy and the Memorandum of Understanding.
As for my initial letter responding to Agricore’s “bizarre interpretations of the MOU” and the company’s independent position on tendering, which was mailed to me and many other farmer members of Agricore, I make no apologies.
Most objectionable is Mr. Wagner’s assertion that the CWB is picking winners and losers among grain companies through car allocation. This is absolutely untrue.
All companies have the opportunity to work with the CWB to secure cars under the railways’ advance booking programs. The fact that Agricore did so for eight shipping weeks is evidence of that opportunity and the decision to end participation in the program was clearly Agricore’s.
The CWB is simply using the commercial mechanisms available to manage our transportation needs with the objective of maximizing returns to farmers.
– Bill Nicholson,
CWB Director, District 9,
Shoal Lake, Man.
Cheer for Chatenay
Who says one man alone cannot change things? Look at Jim Chatenay’s concerns with the CWB’s code of conduct for its directors, which Mr. Chatenay refused to sign. Had he not got his hackles up, producers would probably not even have heard about this infamous document. But because one man chose to stand up for his principles, the rest of the board suddenly saw the light and realized that they were on the wrong path.
Your paper calls Mr. Chatenay a maverick, meaning independent. The way I see it, he is very dependent on the people who elected him, and they know that they can depend on him.
That’s most likely why they re-elected him with an increased majority to a second term.
– Karl H. Schneider,
Mannville, Alta.
Major challenge
In a letter “Change monopoly” (Open Forum, May 17) Jim Pallister of Manitoba writes that defenders of the Canadian Wheat Board are guilty of fabrication when they claim that because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, we would never be able to get the Canadian Wheat Board back if its monopoly was removed.
He quotes NAFTA, Article 1502: “Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to prevent a party from designating a monopoly.”
…Pallister has only quoted the first sentence from Article 1502; the next sentence, Article 1502 (2), states: “Where a party intends to designate a monopoly and the designation may effect the interests” of the U.S., Canada must endeavor to make sure the monopoly will not “minimize or eliminate” any benefits the U.S. “could reasonably have expected to accrue to it under NAFTA.
Pallister then quotes from Article 1503: “Nothing in the Agreement shall be construed to prevent a party from maintaining or establishing a state enterprise.”
Again, he has quoted only Clause 1 of Article 1503. The next clause, (2), states that any state enterprise must act “in a manner that is not inconsistent with [Canada’s] obligations under Chapter 11 [of NAFTA].”
The monopolies section of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (2010) would also bear directly on any attempt to establish, or reestablish, a public enterprise in Canada. …
Today every law and regulation passed in Canada is carefully vetted to see if it is compatible with the FTA and NAFTA. Any attempt to reintroduce a CWB once it has been dismantled would, beyond doubt, attract a major NAFTA challenge from the U.S. government and/or a massive corporate lawsuit.
– David Orchard,
Borden, Sask.
Why high gas?
MLA Brad Wall asks us if we think the provincial government should provide financial relief because of the rising cost of natural gas. I have a better question: Why is the price of natural gas so high in Saskatchewan?
For the answer we have to go back a bit in history. There was a time when the Saskatchewan Power Corporation reserved, for Saskatchewan residents, all the natural gas in the province.
It also purchased gas reserves in the Alberta Manny Islands gas field. None was exported and prices were regulated.
Two right-wing governments put an end to this policy. In the 1960s the Ross Thatcher Liberal government sold the Great Sand Hills gas field to a private company for 25 cents an acre and in the 1980s the Grant Devine Conservative government sold Sask Power’s reserves of 787 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 495,000 undeveloped exploration acres to Sask Oil for a pittance.
Then he sold Sask Oil to his friends, again for much less than its real value. Devine also deregulated natural gas, allowing it to be marketed through distribution companies.
Meanwhile, the residents of the city of Medicine Hat enjoy natural gas prices that are 70 percent lower, and power prices 25 percent lower than the rest of the consumers in Alberta.
Why? Because Medicine Hat has its own gas reserves, which it acquired when gas was abundant and cheap. Saskatchewan once had the same policy but the parents of Mr. Wall’s Saskatchewan Party put an end to that.
We know Mr. Wall and his Saskatchewan Party are unabashed supporters of privatization and deregulation. I wait for him to explain how privatizing and deregulating our natural gas has benefited Saskatchewan consumers. I’m waiting, but I’m not holding my breath.
– Bev Currie,
Swift Current, Sask.
Flour mills
The Canadian processing industry has grown at an incredible rate in the past 10 years and per capita value-added processing is now ahead of the United States.
Despite that, some critics continue to rehash tired old inaccurate cliches to indicate that the Canadian Wheat Board is impeding value-added processing.
Most recently, in a letter to the editor published May 17, Jim Pallister concludes that the CWB is the reason Canada doesn’t have as many mills today as it did earlier in the 20th century.
The reality of the marketplace, not just for flour millers but many other businesses, is that rationalization has taken place and the focus is on fewer, but larger, more efficient plants.
For instance, in the United States the number of flour mills has been more than halved since 1965. Who is responsible for this? Surely this is not a result of CWB controls.
Canadian mills are priced on a level playing field vis-ˆ-vis their U.S. competition as well as each other. The goal of CWB pricing for Canadian mills is to create a competitive price structure similar to the open market by ensuring that prices at different North American locations vary by transportation costs only.
As well, the CWB offers Canadian mills advantages such as a guaranteed supply, pricing and hedging flexibility, professional and technical expertise.
As a result, we now grind more than three million tonnes of wheat annually in the 40 wheat and eight durum mills in Canada.
Interestingly, 11 of those mills have either been built or expanded in the last three years.
It is important that we continue to build on this growth and we are working with all groups who wish to build value-added processing plants.
– Jim Thompson,
Sales Manager,
Canadian Wheat Board,
Winnipeg, Man.
TV proof
The experiences of Manitoba’s “modern pioneers” supports environmentalists’ belief that Canada can indeed afford to clean up our environment.
The younger woman, for whom asthma and allergies were always part of her life, found both disappeared while living on the homestead.
For those homesteading months she probably felt better, was able to do more with easier breathing, and certainly saved money not having to buy medications to ease her breathing.
Multiply Alana Logie’s experience by the thousands of Canadians who suffer allergies and use untold amounts of drugs to combat their miseries. Add in the direct health costs for hospitalizations, ambulances on occasion, as well as time lost from school or work.
Cleaning up our environment would help more than allergy sufferers. It would waylay future sufferers, and enhance the life of every other Canadian as well.
The TV pioneers are proof investing in environmental cleanup would bring big dividends to all except drug manufacturers.
– Claudette Sandecki,
Terrace, B.C.
