What a waste
Our country is no safer, not one life saved and $1 billion wasted on Bill C-68 (gun registry legislation.)
In Ottawa they talk about $1 billion as if it is pocket change. Well, what is $1 billion? It would take a loonie a second for 31.7 years to waste $1 billion, or it would take $86,426 every day for 31.7 years to waste $1 billion or it would take $31,545,741 for 31.7 years to equal $1 billion.
Our government wasted this money in six years. Only $166.6 million per year.
No matter what side of the firearm debate you are on, nobody can justify this kind of waste. Just think what our health care, police force or schools could have done with $31.5 million over the next 31.7 years.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
– Dave Nelson,
Metiskow, Alta.
Go long way
The (Canadian) Wheat Board came into being in 1943 as part of the war time prices and Control board to keep prices down as all prices of all goods were locked in to stop inflation. A good idea at the time.
Soon after the war ended, price controls were removed except the wheat board, which was kept on. The West continued to supply grain to war-torn countries in Europe, Britain, Holland, France, Italy and others with food grain at well below world prices to help them recover from the war. This assistance was not carried by the taxpayers of Canada but by the grain producers, mostly from Western Canada.
And so it’s important that all people of Canada understand this part of our history.
Then there were the years of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviets were aiming nuclear missiles at each other’s cities. Canada did not have much of an army so commitment to our NATO allies was to guarantee two years food supply to our Allies. That was most of Europe, the U.S. and ourselves, should the world go to war.
Our grain storage terminals normally empty out during summer, ready to receive new grain in fall and give farmers a cash flow at that time. However, for decades these terminals were kept always full and western farmers’ cash flow was pushed back several months with added interest and operating costs.
During that time farm failure rates were running at around 8,000 to 10,000 per year. But Ottawa didn’t seem to care.
When (Pierre) Trudeau came to be prime minister, one of his first big changes was to change the Wheat Board Act, making it along with the Atomic Energy Commission and the Secret Service, immune to investigation by our MPs.
Trudeau often boasted how he had learned how to regulate the economy. And one of his main tools was the use of the wheat board. Because the wheat board has always set prices paid to farmers and regulated the terms of grain sales abroad, he was in a position to use as part of foreign exchange and the sale abroad of manufactured goods to the benefit of Eastern Canada. …
Grain was often used … to assist the sale of manufactured goods, even nuclear reactors, to the benefit of industrial Eastern Canada. Barley has always been purposely priced low as a subsidy to livestock and poultry in other parts of Canada, mainly in the East.
The western grain-growing industry is now on its knees. Our country does not have the funds, like Europe or the U.S., to supply western farmers with subsidies.
However, it would go a long way to help if caring people, people who want to see Western Canada stay in confederation, would give political support to ending the wheat board monopoly and permit farmers and the grain industry the freedom to freely export into the prevailing food grain markets that are out there.
This would generate $1billion plus at no cost to the taxpayers of the country and begin a turnaround in repopulating rural Western Canada and a future for our young people.
– Alex McWilliams,
Pilot Mound, Man.
Eaton’s legacy
Re: Eaton’s took Christmas to the country, by Gerry Stewart (WP, Dec. 10.)
This article was not only a real Christmas gift to your readers, but a tribute to a man who greatly contributed to tailor and fashion the minds of us Canadians as being compassionate, understanding and trustworthy. But most important, he taught us how to make business in a civilized manner.
Mr. Stewart recalls a few short stories that one would laugh at nowadays, but of what importance for the time. If not completely satisfied, ship it back collect; or we apologize (because there is) no more in stock, (so) we sent you one of better quality for the same price, were Eaton’s trademarks.
Mr. Stewart was also stating the great service from Eaton’s to any little towns or hamlets in the West. He is right, and I can also witness the same for the East. Living at the time almost in the bush, 500 miles north of Montreal, Eaton’s catalogue was nearly the only hope that kept us alive.
Here, a short story among hundreds: One fall, a beautiful young lady from Quebec City arrived in our area as a teacher and also happened to be our neighbour. As the school year went by, she was getting more and more lonesome and losing interest.
Instead of quitting, and since she was a piano player, she decided to order a piano through the catalogue, a rebuilt one. (It was) delivered by horses, from 10 miles away at the CNR station, in a great big wooden box. …
Before the men had finished unloading, she asked them to take off a couple of planks over the keyboard. The notes appeared and she started to play.
I was about 10 years old, and I will never forget that scene and the heavenly music my ears heard for the first time from a real piano. Years later, she became my mother-in-law and still is at 96. This piano raised a big family with dozens of family parties and now is in my brother-in-law’s home in top condition….
Was Timothy Eaton ahead of his times or exceeded? He was right on as he would ever be. Yes, he was in business to make money, but first he wanted to give good service and always a little more for your money – humanize relations between all Canadians, in a country he really loved, believed in and trusted. This is the legacy of Timothy Eaton. …
– Henri Tousignant,
St.-Ours, Que.
Selling grain
Even though the Canadian Wheat Board elections are over, the anti-CWB rhetoric just keeps flowing. One recent letter claimed that the 13 farmers who spent a very short time in jail in Lethbridge “didn’t time it.”
Well, it seems to me that the media hoopla in the very midst of CWB elections was not merely a fluke. The writer claims that, “very few farmers want to get rid of the CWB.”
This I agree with. Just look at the recent CWB elections – only 17 percent of eligible voters voted for the open marketers.
“They just want the chance to sell their own grain to whomever they please,” including the CWB. This does not necessarily mean they want to sell to the US either.
First off the CWB does not buy farmers’ grain. It simply markets it, with all profits going back to the producer. A prime example of the open market was the removal of oats from the CWB.
In 1988-89 oats were bringing in $3.29 per bushel. Within three weeks of its removal from the board, it was down to $2.15 per bushel.
In January 1993, Charlie Mayer announced that farmers could lock in oats at a whopping $1.70 or $1.80 for September delivery. Now, that’s performance.
The CWB sold more than 20 million tonnes of grain to over 70 countries around the world in the past year. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you have one seller and 70 purchasers, the seller will come out ahead, but if you have 85,000 sellers (farmers) and 70 purchasers, guess who will come out the loser?… Now, I can just hear the anti-CWB (person’s) conversation with a purchaser in Algeria, South Africa, Columbia, Iran, China, or Japan.
“I have two or maybe three B-trains of No. 1 hard spring wheat. How much do you need, and what will you pay me for it? Well, yes, of course it’s No 1, trust me. What’s that? You want it delivered to your port? Come now, how do you expect me to drive a B-train across the ocean?” Click. End of conversation.
– Joyce Neufeld,
Waldeck, Sask.
Farm ownership
With the start of the new year, we are introduced to changes, tax reduction or increases and new laws that start to take effect.
One of these is the new farm ownership legislation that is touted to dramatically change who is going to be able to own farmland, in effect; who will be your next door neighbour.
Pressured by the opposition party as well as many powerful lobbyists, who have obvious motives, the government has pushed its socialist ideals aside and put itself astride the current Americanized version of a deregulated global marketplace, which at first glance has some innocent appeal to many….
The new ownership laws may do little to help. Even under the old law and trends to bigger and bigger farms, many communities have simply succumbed into virtual non-existence. A hundred studies have been initiated about what to do and have melted away with little more than outlining the problem.
Well, we damned well know what the problem is, but who is brave enough to offer a comprehensive solution? Certainly we cannot let things continue to slide. How many country schools have to close and little towns wiped completely off the map before someone blows the whistle?
We need more farmers on the land, not less, and since our own children see less risk in getting an education and immerse themselves in the workforce rather than wallow in million-dollar debts in pursuing a career of an uncertain farm life, we have to turn to the European farmer aspirants to fill the void.
There is one necessary ingredient that would help local communities to better control their future. That is, more local control; whether it is business development or farm ownership.
Why cannot Regina relinquish some of those powers to our local governments? …
Cities have the power to completely say how many houses are going to be in a given block, type of home, etc., and in the commercial sections industry is limited by numerous guidelines.
I am confident that, given the necessary clout, many rural municipalities, either singly or in groups, can map out strategies that will enhance the populations that are now deteriorating within them. Naturally, land size limits may have to apply in a lot of cases. There may be room for larger scale hog enterprises or cattle feedlots, but only if there is to be direct benefits to the people within. …
In a crowded world of today in which Canada is one of the last bastions of space, government mentality has to change.
The new farm ownership law, without the backup system of giving municipal governments a right as to who can come in and how much a given entity can own overall, can only set the scene for the formation of a host of Saskatchewan ghost towns as lasting legacy of a Chrétien-Vanclief-Serby trio, who have been somewhat oblivious to the dangers when the equation of social-economic structures are violently usurped and the purely profit-motivated economic factor is singled out as the sole target that guides our leaders in determining the ultimate destinies of our farming communities.
– Harry Beskorovayny,
Gronlid, Sask.
Out of touch
The letter “Clarifying rejection” in the Jan. 23 issue of The Western Producer, by Dr. Martin Entz is mystifying and misleading.
One has to wonder how Dr. Entz reached the conclusion that we can selectively accept or reject novel trait crops even though those crops have met the required criteria for registration.
To do what Dr. Entz is suggesting would negatively affect research and development investment in Canada and would certainly have trade implications because of the confusing message given to our customers.
The introduction of Roundup Ready trait canola into Western Canada promoted more direct seeding, lower cost weed control, use of more environmentally friendly and less toxic chemicals, and higher yields. Cost savings in storage, transportation and processing also result from the efficiencies gained because of handling less dockage.
In addition, the cost of weed control chemicals used to grow non-GMO canola has been reduced to compete with the Roundup Ready technology, therefore all canola growers are benefiting from introduction of the novel trait crop. We can expect similar benefits with the introduction of herbicide tolerant wheat.
By stating “Roundup Ready trait in wheat just doesn’t provide enough benefits to farmers, consumers or the environment to justify its introduction,” Dr. Entz, although a professor of agronomy, University of Manitoba, ignores obvious facts and is clearly out of touch with what is actually happening on the farm.
– Albert Wagner,
President, Western Barley Growers Association,
Airdrie, Alta.
