Letters to the editor

BST debate

To the Editor:

I am not surprised that the ongoing debate concerning the use of BST (bovine somatotropin) is going on in secret. Just what are they afraid the public will hear? I remember when thalidomide was considered a good thing and when DDT was widely used and accepted. Is there an acute milk shortage or are these chemical giants only concerned with increasing their profit margin?

In 1985 when we of the West Kootenay held a tribunal to protest the use of Roundup (glyphosate), …, we learned that Monsanto not only produced the product, but did its own testing.

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Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

At that time I wrote to Health and Welfare Canada to inquire about possible hazards to humans who ate deer or elk who may have eaten this poison. I was informed that if I was in doubt, I should not eat the meat.

Monsanto’s testing established that deer did in fact eat Roundup, but apparently that was as far as it went – not reassuring.

I have heard horror stories about children in the Third World experiencing puberty as infants due to growth hormones in their food chain. Are Canada’s mothers and children now to be targeted for some similar experiment? Many of these chemical compounds take years to show their side effects.

I cannot urge everyone strongly enough to read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, 25th anniversary edition. Playing with chemicals to make a profit for these multinational giants can be more dangerous than we realize.

Ms. Carson was an American scientist involved in the early days of man’s attempt to change the earth with chemicals. Her book tells what happened and what is still happening. We must not allow bureaucrats, paid off scientists and big business, to dictate to us.

If BST gets the go-ahead, I for one will either quit drinking milk or get my own cow. Better yet, I will start milking my sheep. Is it not bad enough that the majority of fresh produce available in B.C.’s supermarkets comes from California? Sprayed with what? Aren’t we all guinea pigs enough? Silent Spring says it all. Open your eyes, Canada. I fear we are all but pawns in the game.

– Gabriela Grabowsky,

Kaslo, B.C.

Crow sense

To the Editor:

The proposal that the withdrawal of the Crow Rate be compensated by a buy out payment makes no sense at all. Why should a bankrupt treasury give $1 billion-plus payment to anybody?

That it should go to owners of land rather than being based on production, why? Why should there be a gift based on acreage or productive value? If public money is to be given away, let it be to those in need and not based on ownership of land.

A better plan – take the $1 billion-plus and buy land from the big fellows and finance redistribution to those who want and need land to farm on a smaller scale.

The Farm Credit Corporation could be used with relatively small cost to the country.

– Everett Leader,

Portage la Prairie, Man.

Paying attention

To the Editor:

The Fraser Institute is very vocal about how much we are paying in taxes. I think anyone with half a brain knows how much we pay in taxes.

Why doesn’t the Fraser Institute cost out the services we receive from taxes paid? Think of the cost of providing yourself with private – not state-owned and controlled – schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, sewer, water, police force, ferries, airports. harbors. You could go on and on.

I wonder if there would be enough days in a year to pay for these services we now get through taxation if we were paying for them from the private sector, whose only aim is to make themselves rich.

They are sure not in business to look after the average citizen. They are there to make as much money as they can for themselves or, if a stock company, the shareholders

I really do not think it is too bad to work, as the right wing suggests, about half the time to provide the services provided by taxation.

Our problem is, we let people like this sway our thinking, and we elect people who spend our taxes on supposedly services, but who openly admit is their turn at the trough.

If we took more interest in what is going on instead of listening to our press for information about our country, we might find out just what is really going on, and find politicians that just might be able to get Canada back on the right track.

But as long as we have people talking and worrying about money, and not being a bit concerned about people, unless they are rich, we are doomed to this mess, which I’m afraid will get progressively worse.

– J. B. Forrest,

Saanichton, B.C.

Spaying pets

To the Editor:

I have enjoyed your paper for many years, agreeing and disagreeing with its opinions and glad of the facts I have gleaned.

Never have I been more upset than by Verna Thompson’s opinion of June 22.

Doesn’t she realize how many cats in Canada are killed each year because there are not sufficient homes; they are just born to die? A fact of life? Well, it shouldn’t be so.

Responsible pet owners have their cats spayed and neutered. But I want my kids to watch the miracle of birth? Go to any animal shelter and watch the miracle of unnecessary death.

– Michael H. Weeks,

Executive Director

British Columbia SPCA,

Vancouver, B.C.

Road kill

To the Editor:

In the Producer (June 8, 1995) “Balance of Crow fund to go for roads.” You may as well call it road kill.

And Quebec wants a taste of that $100 million to compensate eastern Prairies. Forty million dollars for dehydrating industry; $20 million for administration, nothing for forage growers. To begin with, the Crow Rate was to be in place for all time. I understand that it amounted to 0.0363636 percent of the federal budget. Killing the Crow is not going to pay off the national debt. Government will have to develop at least some common sense. More cuts for agriculture? The economic blood will flow like a river.

Now to elections: Ontario NDPs booted out. It was the only thing to do, as they overspent, gave special privileges…

Saskatchewan election … the present government closed down 53 rural hospitals. Rural people can die off, so what? More hospitals to close?

Where is wisdom? Where is understanding?

– Paul Kuric,

Vega, Alta.

Bilingual heritage

To the Editor:

Much of Canada’s colorful past, the history of the natives, French Canada and the MŽtis, has been relegated to archival shelves, to be read only by researchers. School books did not present our history so it could be remembered. The media has for years presented mainly American history, so Canadians know Davey Crockett and Lewis & Clark better than, if at all, our own great Indian chiefs, Dollard des Ormeaux, colorful French-Canadian voyageurs, traders canoeing our mighty rivers, east and west; la VŽrendrye and sons who spent 17 years in the Canadian West during the French regime of 226 years and the real contribution of the predominantly French-speaking MŽtis in the West.

Our bilingual history does not exist only because of Quebec. There were only French settlements before the conquest in Canada. (Save for Newfoundland which joined in 1949.) The English had a few forts on Hudson Bay, and their settlements were the New England states in United States today.

French-Canadians had penetrated the regions of Western Canada, as explorers, traders and missionaries before the conquest, and they and the MŽtis continued to penetrate and settle long before mass immigration from other lands took place.

Some examples of bilingual heritage: Treaty of Paris, 1763, had numerous terms, and therefore not an unconditional surrender by the French of the “Province de Canada,” as Quebec was then known. It was drafted in both languages.

Quebec Act, 1774, recognized language rights. BNA Act, 1867, laid the foundation for French language rights. North West Territories Act, 1875, and amendments addressed language rights in the West. In 1905, legislation to create the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta was drafted in both languages. To force English only on 70,000 “Canadians” would have been undemocratic and unwise. In 1775, French-Canadians could have joined rebelling Anglo-American colonies.

Gee, we’d all be Americans today. Probably the real desire of the complainers.

– ThŽrse Lefebvre Prince, Yorkton, Sask.

Hoeppner responds

To the Editor:

Articles like, “Bizarre Stories Include the CWB,” (Western Producer July 13, 1995), “Dump MP: Farm Group,” (Daily Graphic, Portage, Man. June 22, 1995), “Boot Hoeppner, NFU says,” (Manitoba Co-operator, July 13, 1995) are prime examples of narrow minds and corrupt philosophies that have brought this nation to the brink of moral and financial bankruptcy.

“Opinion” July 13, 1995 Western Producer article, written by Garry Fairbairn, is short on facts and weak on content. If it is puzzling to Mr. Fairbairn how a buyback for $114 a tonne compared to $210 a tonne buyback decreases a farmer’s final return, I am quite willing to sit down and explain it to him in detail.

Furthermore, Mr. Fairbairn’s intelligence surely can comprehend that the backtracking of grain would have something to do with western farmers losing hundreds of millions of dollars in demurrage charges and lost sales.

As for “Hoeppner’s wild accusations,” if documents with dates, dollar amounts, weights, names of companies and individuals are such, then I’m guilty as charged.

It appears that Mr. Fairbairn would rather have the RCMP quietly sit in their offices registering guns instead of looking into the questionable activities of government ministers, wheat board or commodity exchange officials.

Unfortunately, Mr. Fairbairn doesn’t have a monopoly on incompetence when reporting facts. Tom Mackey, an official with UGG, told the Manitoba Co-operator that Ken Lyne pocketed the CWB initial payment the day he signed the export contract. The facts are that the UGG agent at Manitou issued six cash tickets, number 1505487 to 1505492 for 246 tonnes of feed wheat on July 30, 1994, not Jan. 26, 1994 when he signed the export permit.

In another article in the June 29 Manitoba Co-operator, the CWB and UGG cannot agree on who pocketed Lyne’s storage charges.

For goodness sake, will the real culprit please stand up and identify himself.

As for my being recalled by the NFU, I would be delighted to be one of the 10 original signatures to start the recall if they have the guts to follow through on their threat.

– Jake E. Hoeppner,

MP Lisgar-Marquette, Man.

Second look

To the Editor:

I have read your coverage of the reactions to the Joint Commission on Grain’s interim report with great interest. I think I speak for all 10 members of the panel when I say that maximizing returns to all producers, in Canada and the United States, was our highest priority.

While I am reluctant to engage in public debate over the findings we arrived at after months of diligent research, I did want to answer some of the criticism leveled by Mr. Lorne Hehn.

Mr. Hehn seems particularly upset that our panel suggested that the actions of the CWB can be trade distorting and in fact challenges the panel members by stating “that that’s without a factual basis.”

However, in another article in the same issue of Western Producer (July 6), he states that the board was unable to procure enough barley to satisfy forward contracts and as a consequence suffered penalties and demurrage of $10 million.

He goes on to state that the board will be more cautious about forward selling feed barley in the future.

Few of us could have predicted the relative strength of the feed market this past winter in the face of a record U.S. corn crop.

However, the board’s sole exporter status gave it the ability to sell grain even before it was in the bin, leaving U.S. markets depressed and U.S. farmers competing with these underpriced Canadian exports when the market didn’t respond according to the board’s projections.

Obviously the Lethbridge market, not the Stockton or Yakima market, was the premium market for Canadian barley this past year. Yet millions of bushels were moved south or sold to Japan, when the higher market was right at home.

That, Mr. Hehn, is one example of the board’s actions causing a trade distortion.

Undoubtedly a marketing board often serves the Canadian farmer very well with its unique ability to “play the markets.” Unfortunately, in a global context, that marketing power may come at the expense of an individual seller into the same market. …

Our panel’s recommendation that additional discipline be used to insure the highest possible returns for producers of both countries is valid and deserves a second look.

– Herb Karst, Canada-United States Joint Commission on Grains, Sunburst, Montana