Letters to the editor

There to help

I was recently at a farm home and was reading articles in your paper and read the item regarding Canada bringing in some half billion dollars annually of American beef. Why, when they closed their border to our Canadian beef, which wasn’t diseased except only one animal, and it hasn’t been proven that animal didn’t come from the States?

Thousands of good cattle destroyed over one animal, and what about Japan? They seemed to be who is getting the blame now for keeping the U.S. border closed to our Canadian beef.

Read Also

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.

Just let a tornado or some floods there and see who they run to for help. Us, of course, and they would gladly accept our food and money to help have their country back on their feet. The same for the Americans, they have a disaster and who runs to help them out?

I know it’s the ordinary people who get hurt in all the tragic things that happen and we have always been a country there to help. I think a lot of this cow disease business is all politics and it’s time it got resolved. Our cattle farmers are suffering, along with packing plants, feedlot people and many others.

What’s wrong with our spineless prime minister? Start closing our border to bringing in American beef, stop the flow of oil, gas and our water to the south and see how they start hollering over that.

What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.

– Ethel Meachem,

Carrot River, Sask.

Conspiracy theory

The social and economic effects of bovine spongiform encephalopathy are painful.

Cattle will eat just about anything. When plow was king, grease was applied to the plow bottoms to prevent rusting. Cattle often licked off that grease.

Based on this premise, some suspect the reason one cow developed BSE is that animal happened to eat food prepared from animal parts. Others suspect a conspiracy against the Canadian beef industry.

Be that as it may, as time moves on, the possibility of a conspiracy is becoming more probable. In attempts to trace the BSE source, very many suspect animals were sacrificed yet no Canadian BSE carrier has been found.

Considering no other BSE animal has been detected and refusal to lift the ban suggests a trilateral commission conspiracy. Conspiracy to impoverish many beef producers, then as typical major private multinational financiers, call in the loans.

(Saskatchewan) premier (Lorne) Calvert made a noble move by petitioning the usually understanding president (George) Bush. Only an evil conspiratorial planted writer in Saskatchewan would have called president Bush a shrub, to deliberately disgrace him and the NDP. No wonder an increasing number of people feel a secret conspiracy is the cause.

Well informed authors … have outlined how secret societies and their plants through clever deception have and are influencing our governments. …

– Stuart Makaroff,

Saskatoon, Sask.

About values

I would like to write in support of Russ Baldwin’s letter of last week (July 24) “Turn the valve.”

When we negotiate with the Americans we must realize they want only one thing from Canada – our energy, natural gas and maybe our water. If they would see their access endangered, they might be more inclined to negotiate on the opening of the border.

The Americans see this as a glorious opportunity to destroy a competitor. They would then pick up the pieces and claim our 10 percent of the North American market as their own.

Talks about friendship are just so much window dressing. Ralph Klein made a trip to see his old buddy Dick Cheney and is reported to have got about 10 minutes of Cheney’s time with no visible results. Even more useless are members of the Alliance party lobbying in Washington with much hand wringing of how we should have been willing to shed some blood in Iraq and most certainly not called certain American politicians some bad names, as if that really matters.

– Henry Martens,

Cartwright, Man.

Plan changed

Re: WP editorial and Barry Wilson column July 24.

Your editorial wants the U.S. to fix its regulations and Barry Wilson warns of Fortress America forever protecting and supporting and subsidizing its own industries, ignoring all theories of free trade.

You are correct, of course, but you avoid the larger long-term issues. Canada and Mexico are both foolishly supplying raw material like oil, timber, ore, maybe water, and unfinished beef to the U.S. value-adding industry for them to sell finished products back to us and to Mexico free of all tariffs and duties, while they blithely block our products left and right with subsidies, duties and non-tariff barriers.

Thus it is, was, and ever shall be, until, like the U.S., we develop and maximize our domestic value-adding industry and our domestic commerce from sea to sea to sea, and then sell to the U.S., Japan, and around the world from more diversified secure domestic industry.

That’s how the U.S. and every successful national economy works. That was the Canadian plan 140 years ago in Charlottetown, but which our leaders now ignore in favour of the continental economy and culture, based on the U.S. plan for this, their hemisphere since the 1820 Munroe Doctrine, the (Canada-U.S.) free trade agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and now the coming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

Shall we defer to them and succumb to their manifest destiny?

– Jacob Rempel,

Vancouver, B.C.

Agri-food future

Welcome to the future of the agri-food business and agriculture today. Yes, you are reading right, the future of our industry is here today. The BSE story and the issues around it demonstrate this very clearly.

The negative fallout and ramifications to our industry are enormous. The days to think about agriculture only in terms of production are over.

We are in a multifunctional business, stewards of the land and environment, and have the responsibility to sustain our soils and ensure the land’s viability for generations to come after us.

Between global politics, North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization trade arrangements, media presentations, perception creating, a demanding marketplace and sophisticated consumers, today’s farming clearly has become everybody’s business and concern.

The quality of our products must be guaranteed and secured throughout the supply chains and logistic systems to avoid such complete marketing breakdowns, as we see this happen now in the BSE case.

Remember we were told, as long as I can recall, that we have the safest and best meat in the world. It does not matter. The global market place perception differs and the borders stay closed for Canadian cattle.

Remember the argument about sound science when it comes to trade. We’ve done all that and beyond without success on the trading front with global customers.

Excessive production systems and engagements, too large livestock factories, careless genetic modification of species, hormone and growth enhancing implants, feed rations components and finally what we spray and fertilize our soils with, needs to be evaluated. Clearly sustainability has to be the most important consideration in our engagements.

All those factors must be clearly looked at as we try to expand growth in agriculture….

The federal and some provincial governments including Alberta have staked out a road map of change in the newly introduced agriculture policy framework and will address some of those important issues and direction shifts. …

Agriculture is a most important segment of our economy and Canada overall. We also have an international obligation to be the breadbasket to the less fortunate and hungry in the world.

Adopting those most important changes will again insure Canada can and will be a leader in global multifunctional quality agriculture, where our products are branded with the Maple Leaf and not just traded in the world market place as commodities.

– Leo Meyer,

Woking, Alta.

Grain tendering

Open Letter to Mr. Mark Hemmes, president, Quorum Corp., Edmonton: In your reports on the efficiency of the grain handling and transportation system you state: “One of the objectives of the government’s regulatory reforms was to provide the GHTS with a more commercial orientation. To this end, a cornerstone element of these reforms is the introduction and gradual expansion of tendering for Canadian Wheat Board grain shipments to western Canadian ports.”

Your report for the 2001-02 crop year noted that: “According to the CWB, the advances made in its tendering program have generated significant financial returns that are ultimately being passed back to producers.”

The CWB has recently announced it will be scaling back its tendering system from 50 percent to 20 percent of its transportation requirements. This raises a number of serious questions that Quorum Corp., as the independent monitor of the grain handling and transportation system, is in the best position to answer.

1. What impact will the reduction in tendering have on the system’s ability to deliver the right grain to the right port at the right time in order to meet our export commitments?

2. What impact will the reduction in tendering have on the efficient utilization of primary elevator, railway and terminal elevator resources?

3. What impact will the reduction in tendering have on the utilization of block shipments and the availability of railway incentive discounts?

4. What impact will the reduction in tendering have on the grain handling and transportation costs carried by farmers?

As you are aware, the changes brought forward by the CWB are about to go into effect. For this reason a timely answer to these questions is of critical importance to Canadian grains and oilseed farmers….

– Ken Bee, President,

Grain Growers of Canada

Ottawa, Ont.