Rule of law
To the Editor:
Garry Fairbairn, in support of the Wheat Board monopoly, writes that the rule of law establishes “the principle that everyone from King to peasant was subject to the rule of written laws.” He is correct but he misses the point that the Wheat Board Act is a violation of the universal application of the law; it discriminates.
The Wheat Board Act says that the exportation of wheat is a “prohibited activity” and then goes on to explain that the Wheat Board, an “Agent of Her Majesty,” may export and may license others to export.
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In other words the King can export but the peasants can’t! A direct violation of the editor’s own definition of the time-honored rule of law.
The equal application of the law is also violated by the CWB Act because export licenses are available free of charge to farmers and companies from Quebec, the Maritimes and B.C. , for example.
Prairie farmers, on the other hand, must pay huge buy-back charges to export their grain.
Martin Luther King, in regards to segregation, writes: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. … An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty … is in reality expressing the highest respect for laws.”
– Jim Pallister,
Portage la Prairie, Man.
No jobs
To the Editor:
After listening to the budget of yesterday by our federal Finance Minister, I just have to have some say on it.
In the first place it sounds very much like an election budget; he did not raise taxes on tobacco products or alcohol, which would have been an opportunity to cash in on every good source of income for a cash-strapped government like Canada, caused by the lack of money management by our federal government.
Mind you, he did promise job creation for students coming out of school, but he did not say anything about how this job creation would work, or where the jobs would be, because he knows very well that there are none, and what few that may be created will be only part time and minimum wage, which isn’t going to do anybody much good.
With tens of thousands of students coming onto the labor market at the same time that an equal number of jobs are being eliminated by large employers and governments, there is no such thing that our federal government doesn’t know that there are no jobs, and there is no plan to create adequate and substantial employment for our people requiring jobs.
The everlasting echo that we keep hearing is, get into computers. But I have never yet heard one word about what are all these computers supposed to do, beyond, of course, the normal required number to keep things going. Are they supposed to keep track of each other?
All of our base industries are disappearing at an alarming rate, and not being replaced. I would sure like somebody to explain to me what all these millions of computer operators are supposed to do for work without a base industry. Those supposed jobs just are not there. It is nice to dream but sometime you do have to wake up, and I really do think that it is already past wakeup time.
No country can operate without a base industry. Canada had quite a few, now very shortly we will have none. Our economic advisors and planners seem to think that it is far better to get everybody off the job and onto welfare so that government and employers don’t have to waste money paying a work force.
Then that way they can spend billions more on foreign aid and supposed peacekeeping, mostly in places where it is impossible to keep peace, and we will never retrieve any of this huge cost. It is just nice to be the generous good guy. Now because of all this economic incapability, we are so far in the red that we are not going to get out. Then our overpaid, so-called brainy people wonder why there is labor unrest, like in Ontario, which will likely escalate. The working people just are not as stupid as our expensive people were hoping they were. …
– Grant Bunce,
Pritchard, B.C.
Naive farmers
To the Editor:
I am concerned about these naive, know-it-all, third-generation farmers wanting to get rid of the Wheat Board. It seems grandpa started the farm, dad carried on, gives it to the kid and now he has all the answers.
Tell him to go talk to his grandfather. The grain companies and the banks told the farmer to sell after harvest at low prices and then sold it for 10 times or more what they paid.
It took a lot of work to protect the farmer and every Liberal and Conservative government since, backed by the same banks and grain-company greed, has tried to get rid of it.
These people seem to think they can get a better price.
Do they have agents in Japan, Russia, England, U.S.A., Iran, Africa, etc.?
Can they beat the manipulation on the Chicago Stock Exchange?
Study your history! There were over 20,000 farmers at the Saskatoon rally. Did that stop the Liberals from breaking their election promise and getting rid of the Crow? You haven’t seen nothing yet till the rail lines are gone; do you want to pay to rebuild your roads? Maybe the Crow should go, but couldn’t we have planned it better?
Nationalize the railroad, as they have for Britrail, Swiss Rail, Russian, Japanese, etc. The nearest export point east is Churchill, $30 a ton less than Montreal. Electrify the mountain runs.
But no, send each farmer a few thousand.
That should keep him happy – until he realizes five years or so from now what he lost.
– G. Ferguson,
Cochin, Sask.
Need CWB
To the Editor:
Does one have a better bargaining position when there is only one dealer in the area or when you can deal with a few?
Can a dealer serve you if he doesn’t know what stock he has?
Do we, as farmers, want to be the buyer or seller in the above situation?
When you walk into a grocery store, furniture store, service station, clothing store, etc., how many products do you see that are not regulated?
How many items can you buy at source even if it is produced in the neighborhood? Why do farmers propose that they can be different?
We, as farmers, have always had problems with the concept of organized co-operation and time is teaching us nothing.
I remember the Wheat Board’s inception, and the reasons and rationale for its existence haven’t changed.
Perhaps it’s necessary to overhaul the old machine, but we certainly don’t need two wrecks.
– E. O. Oystreck,
Yorkton, Sask.
Tact and fact
To the Editor:
Seems to be a bit of selective memory among those strong against dual marketing. They feel it would be impossible to operate without government support and/or regulations. GRIP (particularly in Saskatchewan) and Crow forever are two of the main ones now basically dead. And we are still farming!
But of course we could never sell wheat and barley outside of western Canada without the CWB. Who would protect us from the multinational “sharks” and the grain exchange “gangs”? But feed grains have provided net returns similar to R.S. wheat. And net returns on canola were above that of R.S. wheat.
Must have been an oversight on the part of the “sharks”‘ and “gangs.” Do scare tactics come to mind?
For the CWB to make changes of the necessary magnitude requires people of vision. By far the greatest number of CWB commissioners and advisory committee members are status quo rather than visionaries.
And Mr. Rodvang, you refer to dual-market lobby tactics. There were no lobby or tactical meetings attended by me. For someone to come up with an idea might seem foreign to you, what with all the tactical meetings, CWB propaganda (sorry, I meant CWB “facts”), and closed-door confidential information meetings sponsored by CWB or pro-CWB people. Especially when the most favored response by producers to these presentations is to ask, “how high?” If the CWB is as good as they say, why are they so afraid of farmers making a decision without a presentation of CWB “facts”?
- Ken Wasmuth,
Wainwright, Alta.
CBC taxes
To the Editor:
Something grinds deep within me when I hear the suggestion that Canadians be taxed more for the CBC. I must say I like some of the CBC radio and television programming but it seems to me that the CBC and the entertainment industry in general are producing an increasing amount of pornographic and violent trash.
Even though CBC appears to make an effort to remain unbiased and objective (something I recognize is not really possible) it has become a medium/platform used primarily by special interest political and social (often tax-funded) lobbies of a left-wing humanistic view.
I do not believe there is a CBC conspiracy here, but with few exceptions, their journalists and producers tend to be of that same slant. So we have a subtle and sophisticated, public-funded propaganda machine which focuses more on feminist and homosexual lifestyle issues than it does on Christian values, motherhood and the traditional family.
A lot of us support a wife and family on a single income which is often a fraction of the unionized wages and benefits of CBC employees. Do you really expect us to stand for paying more taxes to CBC as they tear down basic Canadian values?
As for needing CBC to sustain culture, artistic identity and Canadian unity, that’s a crock. Come on fellow citizens, hoist the flag, shut Hollywood off, get out there and support our local arts and entertainment.
– Reg Hoegl,
Lloydminster, Sask.
Gag laws
To the Editor:
The Feb. 15 article by Robert Lewis in the Western Producer was very forceful in condemnation of “back-to-nature freaks” who make any disparaging statements about farm products if the statements cannot be supported by verifiable science.
Further, Robert Lewis states that not a single case of illness, much less death, has ever been attributed to agricultural chemicals that have been applied in conformance with the label instructions. Many states have passed laws that make it an offense to criticize farm products as being unhealthy unless scientific proof exists to substantiate such statements.
The many reports from individual farmers regarding the permanent chemical effects they incur, in spite of following the directions carefully, are dismissed as anecdotal but there is no doubt about the thousands of reports gathered up about the fruit or vegetable pickers who enter the sprayed areas later. Often these are children or pregnant women. …
Scientists can now measure the missing field pesticides and these are bound up in the grain and other food crops, anywhere from 16 percent of the atrazine applied to corn, to the 93 percent of carbofuran on radishes. Allowable limits were set long before such hidden residues were known to be in our food and livestock feed but the same old antique testing procedures are still being used by inspectors.
When laws are passed to stifle and suppress criticism, wherever it may originate, then honest dialogue and investigation are also suppressed and new and possibly better techniques aren’t examined or tried.
Farmers do care about the land and the food they produce and many share the concerns of the nature freaks, and much more besides, as they are well aware how destructive many present farming practices are. Silence and gagging laws won’t solve the problems and provide us with clean ground water, fertile soils and clean air.
– Ellen Francis,
Silver, Man.
In farmers’ fields
To the Editor:
In 1943 dual marketing was taken away from farmers. Our freedom was to be returned at the end of the war.
Over 50 years have passed and we are still denied our democratic rights. We urge all farmers to pressure the authorities so that we may regain our freedom. I think the following poem reflects this concern.
Ode to Freedom
In farmer’s fields the wheat crops grow
Beside the barley, row on row.
It is our hope. We must be fools!
We let the Wheat Board make the rules.
We are the old. In years gone by
We planned and dreamed, but all awry.
Because of war, we lost our choice.
And now with peace we have no voice.
In Winn’peg in the Taj Mahal
We pay huge wage for each and all.
A staff whose jobs have doubtful worth,
They think it’s jerks who till the earth.
Take up the quarrel with the Board.
We hope our youth will fight the hoard.
Resist the rules that strangle so.
Be free to sell whate’er you grow.
We hope before this year is out
The laws will change. Then we will shout,
“We’re free” like years gone past
To sell our grain, not to be harassed.
Then we will rest while wheat crops grow in farmers’ fields.
– Don Whyte,
Nipawin, Sask.
Truckers pay
To the Editor:
I have to respond to C. Reimer’s and M. Wozniak’s letters in the Feb. 15 issue.
I strongly disagree on their remarks that “the farmer pays for everything” and “truckers should pay more for registration.”
We are in the trucking industry and we do pay. To register one tractor/trailer unit we pay $2,504/year. To register the same unit the farmer would only pay $76.
As far as who is paying their fair share, maybe Mr. Reimer and Mr. Wozniak should look into what percentage of income, fuel and corporate tax and registration dollars paid by the transportation industry are used to fund our secondary roads and major highways and compare that figure to the taxes the farmer has put into these funds.
Secondary roads are not built and maintained 100 percent by local governments. Thought should be given to where the funds are coming from to build and maintain major highways and secondary roads that we all use. Tax and registration dollars. And who is paying a large portion of this? The transportation industry.
I’m not suggesting that the farmer pay more but want to say that the transportation industry is paying “their fair share.”
Mr. Reimer also stated that his truck does not put on over 5,000 kilometres a year. That’s just one piece of equipment. What about the tractors and other heavy equipment (that do not require registration) that go up and down the local road? In our area the local truckers are very conscious about the road bans. But we have seen quite a few local farmers decide to haul their grain to market on a nice warm spring day and rut up the roads. So let’s not start laying blame.
Mr. Reimer has observed a lot of new trucks on the road. He obviously has never been in the transportation industry and does not know how quickly repairs can drag a trucker under. When a truck has to be on the road 18 hours a day, 365 days a year, you need reliable equipment.
These truckers are not all driving new trucks because they are making a darn good living off of everybody else. It’s a matter of survival.
Whether the farmer hauls his product to market or he hires a trucker, the product still has to go over the local road and we’re all paying.
– Grace Hiemstra,
Barrhead, Alta.
Paper wealth
To the Editor:
If you have money to invest, you can get rich on the interest. That is on paper. Interest is rent, paid for the use of someone else’s money. But if the money is not used to produce actual wealth, then the profit is only on paper and is of no real value. Spending paper profits only creates or adds to debt. Governments promise to balance the budget at some future date. But it is just the annual budget.
We are spending almost twice as much real wealth as we are producing. Our standard of living is based on credit. We have an almost cashless society. People today pay with credit cards or cheques. Almost no real money changes hands.
Our educational system is a white elephant imposed on the people. It takes almost half of our local taxes and is training for high salaried jobs that do not exist today, jobs that produce none of the country’s wealth. We have a huge public debt, but don’t blame it all on the government. We have a consumer debt of around $85 billion, so we are all to blame. When we the people control our spending, we can demand that our governments do the same.
When we get around to paying labor for production and not for keeping up with inflation, which is the result of unearned wage increases, then, and not until then, will we get our economy under control.
We pay high salaries to the wrong people. Make it profitable for the people who actually produce the country’s real wealth, and our economy will boom.
– J.R. Clayton,
Killarney, Man.
Manitoba hogs
To the Editor:
Issue Feb. 22, page 13, Markets: Larry Martin has some good comments on security and price pooling in marketing.
The hog industry should be able to service niche markets and retain the security of price pooling. There has to be a way.
I think our Manitoba government is being very shortsighted in its way of changing hog marketing. It is unfortunate that a veteran politician is being used by the Manitoba government. Mr. Enns deserves better.
