Letters to the editor

Need AIDA

To the Editor:

Letter to the Honorable Dwain Lingenfelter:

Please stay in the 1999 AIDA program. I am a producer in the southeast part of Saskatchewan. Due to the disastrous weather in the spring of 1999 our farm had the worst crop in my 19-year career. This was because of the spring flooding which delayed seeding and made the crop mature very late.

Excess moisture caused disease in the crop, which did not fill properly and reduced quality in the rest of the yield. Frost on the late seeded crop also reduced quality and yield. Because of the poor crop my grain inventory is reduced by two thirds from the beginning of the year.

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Due to this drastic drop in inventory and no prepurchased inputs, my 1999 Interim AIDA application shows that I could qualify for a major amount of money from AIDA to help offset some of the lost crop.

Because you, Mr. Lingenfelter, have decided to pull Saskatch-ewan out of the 1999 AIDA program, this money will not go to the area of the province that needs it the most.

The AIDA program was designed as a disaster program and will work for the southeast corner of Saskatchewan this year.

The money from AIDA will allow many farmers to pay off their operating loans incurred from last year and secure credit to put in this year’s crop….

But if this AIDA money does not come to southeast Saskat-chewan then many farmers will not be able to put a crop in this year. I have talked to many of my neighbors and those who have done their 1999 interim AIDA application will also qualify for a large payment this year. Some farmers are waiting for the full 1999 AIDA applications to come out and do not know the hurt that this will cause them yet.

I beg you Mr. Lingenfelter to keep Saskatchewan in the 1999 AIDA program. Without it this area of the province will be devastated for 2000.

– Wilfred J. Frondall,

Moosomin, Sask.

Who were they?

To the Editor:

I have been following the reactions to the Kroeger report with great interest since its release last fall. If farmers are having difficulty sorting out the conflicting reports in the media, it’s worth their while to acquire a copy of the Kroeger Report from Transport Canada.

I have had difficulty in determining who the participants were in Kroeger’s own steering committee. He did not list their names in his stakeholder’s report yet he did include the names of the participants in the three working groups. I wonder why?

In Kroeger’s Sept. 29 letter to (federal transport minister) David Collenette he says that rather than implement open access to the rail network he favors a proposal to study it further. Kroeger states that this proposal was made by “a few participants late in the process.”

This leads one to believe that there were three or more participants who felt we should study open access further. I wonder who the participants were?

It wasn’t the railroads because they opposed it from the beginning, not late in the process. …

It wasn’t the Keystone Agriculture Producers, the Wild Rose Agriculture Producers or the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities. Their joint paper released just prior to Kroeger’s report supported open access.

It wasn’t the Canadian Wheat Board or the prairie provinces because they publicly supported the KAP/WRAP/SARM paper.

In Working Group Three’s report, the Western Grain Elevator Association didn’t support the railroads’ position against open access. It’s doubtful they would change their position during Kroeger’s final steering committee meetings on Sept. 8 and Sept. 9. After all, when it comes to freight charges, they don’t pay them, they simply pass them on.

That leaves the Western Canadian Wheat Growers/Prairie Farm Commodities Coalition who, as everyone knows, have publicly defended the railroads’ concerns on open access.

Mr. Kroeger should be asked, “Who are the participants other than the WCWG/PFCC, who late in the process, felt we should study open access further?”

Farmers should challenge Mr. Kroeger to come clean with Western Canadians and he should either admit that these so-called other participants don’t exist or else name them.

– Allen Kuhlmann,

Vanguard, Sask.

Refreshing meeting

To the Editor:

Recently the Commons Committee on agriculture held hearings across Western Canada to get farmers’ opinions on the income crisis facing prairie farmers. I attended the meeting at Vegreville and was very impressed with the well thought out presentations made by the farmers there.

There was general agreement that crop income was disastrously low, without much hope for improvement in the near future. Input costs are rising. New technology has increased yields which has only led to lower prices and an increasing share of profits going to pay for this technology.

Consensus was that subsidized production by our competitor countries was killing our prices.

It seems we abandoned the Crow Rate and our Safety Net programs before making sure our competitors in Europe and the U.S. were doing the same. One farmer said, “You wouldn’t play cards like that. Don’t use your trump cards without getting something in return.”

No sooner had this been spoken than up stepped the Alberta Grain Commission representatives. By golly, if we didn’t get rid of supply management in the dairy industry we couldn’t expect other countries to drop their subsidies. (Same group that worked for us to get rid of the Crow Rate and Red Meat Stabilization just before we needed it.)

The dairy industry is one sector in agriculture that has a stable income outlook, so let’s put the skids under them too?

It was quite refreshing not to have anyone zeroing in on the proposition that all our problems would go away if we did away with the Canadian Wheat Board. It seems the Western Wheat Growers were planning their convention in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, at the time. Must have been quite a hard decision – Puerto Vallarta or Vegreville. I expect we lost them to the tax write-off for convention expenses. …Their input at Vegreville was not missed.

The farmers at the Vegreville meeting put forth sincere and useful ideas. Hopefully they will be heard and hopefully an effective safety net can be put in place to protect farmers from disastrous prices. We are in very real danger of losing very many capable, skilled farm people. Severe hardships will be placed on farm families. There were numerous expressions of concern that family farms should continue to be passed on to future generations as family farms.

– Donald Thompson,

Rosalind, Alta.

Enjoy the sun

To the Editor:

So the Western Canadian Wheat Growers are off to Puerto Vallarta for their annual convention. Can you imagine that? I know that we as western Canadian farmers should be sitting on our duffs this winter and doing nothing to improve our lot in life aside from our monthly cap-in-hand parades to Ottawa to beg for money.

Here these guys actually have the audacity to hold a convention, do some planning for 2000, and meet to do business with some important contacts from one of our major trading partners.

Now before I go any further I want to make it clear that I am not a member of ANY farm organization or any political party. I am a farmer, but I also live and work in the city full time.

Members of the WCWGA should not feel bad, nor apologize to anyone for taking care of their business in a prudent and cost effective manner, and holding a convention in Mexico, even during these times, is both prudent and cost effective at $1,200 per person for the week.

They are doing so at their own expense – not with taxpayers’ dollars as some would have you believe. You ask “well what about the $1.3 billion they went to Ottawa to ask for farmers a couple months ago? Certainly that money, if it’s given, is coming from the taxpayer.”

Now I don’t know exactly why the WCWGA ever took part in the coalition to Ottawa to ask for $1.3 billion of taxpayers money for farm aid…..However, the $1.3 billion the west is asking for in the form of farm aid is not taxpayers’ money in the first place.

This, and much, much more is money that has been skimmed off the top of the CWB over the past 60 plus years. It should be returned in full to prairie farmers with a thank you note attached …

Prove it, you say? Well of course I can’t because, by law, the CWB does not have to disclose any of its sales contract information to the public. …But the bottom line is that this was never taxpayers’ money in the first place. …

I don’t need to remind anyone that we have allowed the NDP to remain in power in Saskat-chewan and have been unsuccessful in removing the super-secretive CWB from their monopoly purchasing power over Western Canadian cereal grains.

Obviously we have not done all we can to permanently rid ourselves of these socialist organizations and take the first steps forward in developing more industry in this province. Until we do, we should not expect anyone to feel sorry …

To the members of the WCWGA, I hope you (had) an enjoyable and productive convention.

– Doug Graham, P.Ag.

Regina, Sask.

Dear P.M. …

To the Editor:

Letter to Prime Minister Jean ChrŽtien: I have enclosed a cheque for Revenue Canada but I wanted someone to read this letter and meet my family before they cashed it.

I am a teacher and my husband, Mo, is a farmer. We have two children. Ben is 13 and Jonah is 9. In 1985, we moved back to Saskatchewan to farm land that Mo’s dad had once farmed. In order to get started, Mo worked as an electrician as well.

In 1988, I began to teach full-time and by this time we had Ben. Mo continued to work part-time as an electrician and his mother helped us out by taking care of Ben when Mo was working.

After Jonah was born in 1990, Mo stopped working as an electrician, choosing to look after the boys and our fledgling farm. Because the boys were looked after by their father, I was never able to claim childcare expenses….

We have continued to live and work in this way since then. Our children have a fine life growing up on a farm and cousins, friends and school groups have also benefited from visits to a working farm.

Every year at income tax time, I get frustrated as I try to find deductions. There are very few that I can claim. Though I subsidize our farm with my salary, I am unable to use that in any way even though Tatiggaq Farm is as Canadian as any corporation.

It is our choice of investment, yet it is not recognized. I have never claimed childcare expenses but last year, I learned that summer camps/sports camps/schools were an allowable child care expense. Finally, I thought, an expense that I can claim.

Not so. Only the parent with the lower income may claim that as an expense. With the farm, Mo already has more deductions than he needs; in other words our farm income is very low. I must pay the $76.48 back. $76.48 for 13 years of childcare expenses, nine of those for two children. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back….

This is not about money. There are many Canadians who choose to live and work where they are because of more than money and that is the reason why we are Canadian and have love and pride for our country.

If our fellow Canadians are willing to sacrifice the family farms across the country for more profitable agribusinesses, so be it, but it will not only be our loss, it will be theirs too.

Use this $76.48 wisely.