Letters to the editor

CWB sale

To the Editor:

The Oct. 30 issue of the Western Producer contains a letter from Alex Herle criticizing the CWB for making a wheat sale to Russia. Mr. Herle questions whether the CWB undersold the market to make a sale, because Russia produces some of its own wheat requirements.

Over the years, many of the world’s top wheat customers have produced some of their own wheat, while also being large importers. This includes Europe, Russia and China.

In this most recent sale, Russia simply found it more cost-effective to buy wheat on the world market for their eastern regions, rather than rail it across the continent from their wheat-producing areas.

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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.

The CWB sells wheat on the world market at the best prices available, as well as achieving premiums in many situations.

Because many of the CWB’s critics have charged the CWB with hiding its sales contracts, an independent study of its wheat sales performance was commissioned. Western Canada’s most prominent agriculture economists, Kraft, Furtan and Tyrchniewicz were given full and complete access to all CWB wheat sales contracts from 1980-81 to 1993-94.

Returns were compared to those achieved by our major competitors for equivalent quality wheat. They concluded the CWB achieved additional revenues averaging $265 million per year or $13.35 per tonne. These additional revenues were achieved because of the CWB’s single-desk or monopoly status.

The CWB has been investigated by five different trade tribunals on charges of dumping grain in American markets. In every case, this has been shown to be untrue.

The CWB’s objective is to achieve the highest return on the largest volume of our stakeholder’s wheat and barley. Mr. Herle can rest assured the CWB, as with any monopoly seller, has no interest or reason to undercut the market.

– Norm Cobb,

Communications Officer,

The Canadian Wheat Board,

Winnipeg, Man.

Flood aid

To the Editor:

Re: Articles on Red River Flood in Oct. 23 edition.

Counsellors like Hebert are sent by the Government to help the poor prairie farmers flooded out last spring.

“There’s a lot of anger so we have to listen to them, validate what they’re feeling and then turn that anger into something pro-active.” Bafflegab!

Provide the money and there would be no need for counselling. The approximate monthly cost of the 13-member team with their three offices and a mobile home could have taken care of the Sarrasin’s shortfall the first month and then more each and every month thereafter.

The government help is, as usual, window-dressing. It reminds me of the old joke about a Minister of Agriculture in a plane, looking out and saying “If I threw a $100 bill out there I bet I could make at least one farmer happy, if I threw two $50 bills out maybe I could make two farmers happy.”

At that point the man across the aisle said “why don’t you throw yourself out the window and make them all happy?” Yeah, and take the counsellors with you – that’s pro-active.

– Laura Lee Grant,

Burns Lake, B.C.

Reform and CWB

To the Editor:

While the public frequently knows where a Member of Parliament stands on an issue due to his or her party affiliation, their critics often remain anonymous.

The letter from Mrs. Leahy in your Oct. 30 issue is a case in point. While everyone in the B.C. Peace River region knows she has a long and distinguished career with both the National Farmers Union and the NDP, the rest of your readership may not. Having this knowledge places her criticism of the Reform Party and myself in a much different light than if she was a farmer with no particular axe to grind.

As to her specific remarks about my position towards the Canadian Wheat Board, I would like to make the following points:

1. I do not “ridicule and put down” the CWB but instead offer constructive criticism in the slim hope Minister Goodale and his government will reform the Board to make it voluntary.

2. That two-thirds of farmers; 57 percent of the respondents to my survey in the B.C. Peace River region, supported the CWB maintaining single-desk selling of all barley should not be taken as unconditional approval given the “all or nothing” nature of the question.

3. Mrs. Leahy’s continued support for the unaccountability of the CWB by comparing it to Cargill hardly warrants a reply, other than to point out that the last time I checked, farmers weren’t forced to sell to Cargill.

That socialists cling desperately to the status-quo state-run monopoly should surprise no one. To argue that the majority of farmers feel the same is deceptive in the extreme.

Clearly most, including Reformers, want the CWB to survive, but they’re far ahead of the Minister in the major reforms they are seeking.

– Jay Hill, MP

Prince George – Peace River

MMT facts

To the Editor:

Philip Lindenback’s letter to the editor of Oct. 23 (“Dearly departed”) contains vivid examples of the type of non-scientific innuendo that pervaded the debate on Bill C-29.

C-29 is the act passed by Parliament which banned the importation and interprovincial trade of MMT.

MMT is a fuel additive which has been used in Canadian gasoline since 1977, improves the performance of gasoline and cuts nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 20 percent.

Nitrogen oxide is one of the major cause of urban smog.

Mr. Lindenback should have done his research.

He states quite emphatically that “MMT has a proven health risk in its use.”

If Mr. Lindenback is right, then he knows more than the top scientists at Health Canada. Health Canada has stated after intensive testing that MMT is not a health risk to Canadians.

He also says “Indeed it is banned from use in formulated gasoline in the U.S.” Wrong again, Mr. Lindenback.

MMT is not banned in the United States.

If MMT is a danger to human health or if it is an environmental problem, then there is no doubt that the Canadian government would have taken immediate steps to ban it outright.

They didn’t because there is nothing wrong with it.

The result is a bad piece of legislation, pushed by the automobile companies, based on trade, which has left Ethyl with no alternative but to bring a NAFTA claim against Canada.

This is not a case of “dollars holding much higher priority than the health of mere humans,” this is a case of a business which has had its business taken away from it for no reason and looking for compensation.

– David Wilson,

President, Ethyl Canada,

Mississauga, Ont.