Leftist writers
To the Editor:
Recently I subscribed to the Western Producer for the purpose of subscribing to a Canadian farm publication that carried advertisements specifically for the farm. It has been a long time since I’ve read the Producer. The last time was when my father subscribed to your paper, I believe in the late Forties.
He dropped it after one year and I think I know why. Your columnists and you on the editorial page seem to be very left of centre or socialist in thinking. Too bad. As the late Ross Thatcher, past premier of Saskatchewan, once said, “there is only one thing wrong with socialism, it doesn’t work.”
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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.
Your editorial stand on the Canadian Wheat Board is one example. The wheat board is a dinosaur that has not kept up with the changes that have happened elsewhere in agriculture.
When an organization or company falls behind the times, it dies. This is what is happening to the wheat board. Not even the wailing of the leftist National Farmers Union or your editorial opinion nor the rigged barley marketing vote created by the minister of the wheat board, Ralph Goodale, will keep the wheat board from disintegrating.
What would stop the disintegration would be changes which would serve all farmers. That is what was asked of and responded to by the Alberta government.
Two thirds of the farmers in the Alberta vote voted for a dual system. The opinions of you, mister editor, or the premier of Saskatchewan, are “it won’t work,” but the opinions of the farmers supporting such a marketing system are also valid.
Opinions are, after all, “opinions” and all are valid.
A dual system will work but not operate as it does today. In fact, the first thing that would need to happen is to remove and replace the people who are today controlling and operating the board. They built the present system and would not be able to create and operate a system that is dual marketing.
“Pooling” wouldn’t stop or need to stop but it would be different from what is in place today. That change is what the present supporters of the board are now, in my opinion, afraid of.
Pooling prices are “average.” By definition, 50 percent of the producers are below and 50 percent are above this value called the average. The producer operating below the average wants nothing to change and the ones above want the chiseling away of their income to stop.
The bottom line, therefore, is the reason producers take the position they do. As Socrates said, “in battle, the coward and the brave man do what they do for the same reason.”
– Robert Hauswirth,
Calgary, Alta.
CWB successes
To the Editor:
The letters “Barley victory” and “Non-selling” published in The Western Producer of May 1 in very different ways support the CWB, while the “CWB failures” letter like all anti-CWB letters differs only in style and signature. Anti-CWB rhetoric asserts “open marketers” are the educated. The purpose of education is to teach people how to think. The influx of corporatism has changed education into producing robotized corporate lackeys.
No wonder many professionals don’t think and democracy is being oppressed. Those who doubt that must read John Ralston Saul’s book The Unconscious Civilization.
The anti-CWBs harmoniously blame the CWB for the waiting ships but discount bad weather conditions, rail line irresponsibility, labor problems, etc. To blame the CWB in such a manner reflects deep insecurities.
Another very desperate attempt to discredit the CWB is the claim that the open-market system promotes stability and diversified production.
If that were true, Russia now under a “free open-market economy” would have confident, happy people. Instead, that nation is plagued with unprecedented inflation, crime, cutbacks to education, health care, social programs, etc., enabling a few to become very wealthy at the expense of the masses.
The anti-Crow like the anti-CWB advocates believe the CWB and the Crow stifled diversification. Not so! Before the advent of corporate-sized farms, diverse farming was universal, often supplemented with value-added production. The “new agricultural diversification programs” don’t constitute real diversification but are specialty corporate-sized projects.
They claim open-market prices bring in higher returns. My 1995-96 barley returns were $37.25 per ton higher than my open-market sales, yet the anti CWB advocates still say the open market brings higher prices. These people become silent when asked how they netted more than CWB returns.
– Stuart Makaroff,
Saskatoon, Sask.
High prices?
To the Editor:
I see in various newspapers hog prices high; chicken prices also too high. What are we talking about here? What are we comparing our farm produce to, wages in Russia? Surely not to the buying power farm produce has today compared to what it had 40 to 50 years ago. …
– John Pokorney,
Tilley, Alta.
Lost Canada
To the Editor:
Around the turn of the century there were Canadians who designed and built automobiles. What became of them? Over and over again we see that we can’t do anything for ourselves – or so it would seem.
What has happened to our publishing business? As we go through grocery checkouts we see displays of magazines placed where we are supposed to impulsively buy them. Only one or two are Canadian magazines. …
The “merchandising” of our national police force has been taken over by the Disney empire.
The hair on the back of my head stands up when I see the United States flag on our trains, which are not really our trains anymore. Our northern rail line, which was constantly ignored by the government in Ottawa, has been sold to a foreign power.
Next, they will own our northern port, and has everyone forgotten that this is the same foreign power which has in the past contested Canadian sovereignty to our far north?
It has only recently filtered down to we peasants that our politicians have been meeting behind closed doors with politicians from a few other countries to finalize a deal which will lead us further down the so-called “free” trade path, to the point where we have absolutely no control over what happens in what was once our country.
Among the many bits of magic dust thrown into our eyes is that we are a “tolerant” nation. Our politicians tell us this all the time, but what is really meant is that we are wishy-washy.
That extends to our governments who, bit by bit, have weakly given away our country.
The list of what Canada once had and has lost could be very long. To be sure, we are a trading nation but do we have to give away the store?
The latest slogan of the CBC is “television/radio to call our own”. How they can say that about the television and keep a straight face is – interesting.
– C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
