Deferred payments
The federal budget proposes to do away with the deferred payment program on sales for barley, wheat, oats, flaxseed, canola, and rye. That means farmers will no longer be able to defer a portion of their income into the following year.
Farmers have until May 24 to submit comments to: consultation_tax_2017@canada.ca.
The government needs to hear from farmers, en masse. This has huge (negative) tax implications to farmers who have been “deferring” payments for their grain, from one year to next, to try to equalize income from good to bad years.
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Farm groups are too amiable with the federal government
Farm groups and commodity groups in Canada often strike a conciliatory tone, rather than aggressively criticizing the government.
As Kevin Auch, chair of Alberta Wheat Commission, stated, “some years we’ll have a great crop, the next year we’ll have a hailstorm and get wiped out. Our production can vary quite a bit.”
Whether it’s hailstorms, a drought (like 2002), or lousy harvest weather like last fall, which meant that crops stayed out all winter, weather of all sorts can play havoc with our crop yields.
And, this proposed tax change eliminates an option that has proved to be helpful to farmers in the past. (Is this just a tax grab by this government?)
I thought I should bring this to your attention, so that all of us can submit our concerns before the May 24 deadline.
Marion Leithead
Bawlf, Alta.
Property rights
After reading “Sask. farmers fight to protect property” (March 23, WP), I had to reply. What’s the best way to fight crime in rural Saskatchewan, or elsewhere for that matter?
Seems everyone is asked to let the crooks be, call the cops, don’t defend yourself, your property or anyone else. If you do, you are called a vigilante.
For one thing, there will never be enough cops to prevent crime unless each of us has a personal bodyguard. I think Canadians in general watch too many police shows and get a completely wrong idea how most cop and crook situations play out.
You’ve seen how the cops storm in at the last minute and save the victim in the nick of time, over and over again. If that happens once in the average cop’s lifetime, that is more realistic.
In general, cops investigate crime after the fact, after there are victims.
In all fairness, they are severely stressed and can’t be everywhere. What to do? If our elected politicians, mainly the liberal and left wingers, would look south to the U.S. for sensible solutions our crime problems could go a long way to being solved.
Take Arizona and Montana. State after state is going to concealed carry of firearms. What this does is drop the crime rates, theft, assault, homicides at an amazing rate, and they have the FBI crime statistics to prove it.
But you’ll never hear of this in Canada, anti-gun politicians, chief’s of police, media, gun control advocates only want you to hear negative things about guns.
This unfortunately messes with their agendas, which is to get rid of guns.
In Canada we basically don’t have the right to defend ourselves, our families or our property. Crooks have free rein to assault, cheat, steal or murder because they know the victims are unarmed and will be in worse trouble than them if they defend themselves. That’s why the Canadian crime rates keep getting worse.
If you are a crook in Arizona and want to practise your trade there, you have picked the wrong place.
The very fact that the bad guys don’t know who is armed and legal to use force keeps them away.
The fact is firearms in the hands of the law-abiding and honest citizens saves lives and prevents crime, proven over and over again.
The citizens get background checked and training and there’s no blood running in the streets like what we’re told by our country.
I challenge our government to look at what works to reduce crime and quit feeding the populace lies, deception, half truths and fear mongering.
Bruno Gross
Fairview, Alta
