CANADA A MESS
To the Editor:
I have not written to Open Forum for a few years now, but when I read The Western Producer I can’t believe how many greedy people work at the top.
And the only reason they disagree and fight things the government is doing is because they don’t want to give up their high-paying jobs, not because of their concern for the people or the country.
And the brainwashed people who never admit what governments do wrong, just because that’s what they voted all their lives.
Read Also
Proactive approach best bet with looming catastrophes
The Pan-Canadian Action Plan on African swine fever has been developed to avoid the worst case scenario — a total loss ofmarket access.
Quebec wanting to keep the long gun registry is a bunch of Liberals and NDP being miserable, just as with the CWB directors.
Give it up already. It is sickening. It’s sure hard to give up a big paycheque, made on the back of someone else.
Also, the pipeline thing environmentalists and ethnic groups don’t want. It might create a lot of jobs and they might have to go to work. It only makes sense to supply our own oil. Shipping across the ocean is more environmentally dangerous than the pipelines.
Plus, they could stop sending us oil if they declared war against us. Wake up people. Also, do you like $1.40 a litre for gas?
What is happening to our election system in Canada? I have never seen such corruption by two parties as I have of the NDP and the Liberals — crybabies from the word go. They have no care for country or people, just for their own power.
The NDP wish to stop all our oil production. Watch what you vote for, people.
And robocalls. Really? I commend the Conservative government for cutting a lot of the jobs at the top. These are easy, highly paid jobs that are not necessary. Maybe now some of these people can do some real work.
The next ones that need cutting are our CEOs at the health boards. They are only there for the high income and have done a great job of messing up our medical system. Hospitals are closed that should not have been.
I get very disgusted at the thinking of a lot of people. They can’t see further than the end of their noses.
B. E. Tiringer,
Spiritwood, Sask.
BIOFUELS STUDY WRONG
To the Editor:
An op-ed (May 10 WP) on biofuels and greenhouse gas balances by Eric Merkley of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy provides a classical example of the half truth.
It’s true, as he states, that two papers published in Science in 2008 — and notably one by Searchinger at Princeton University — claimed that expanded biofuel production means large-scale conversion of long-term forests and grasslands into crop production, with the resultant mega release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
But Merkley failed to mention the substantial number of readily accessible studies published since, including a joint one from the United States departments of energy and agriculture and one from Purdue University, showing that Searchinger calculations were either extreme or simply wrong.
In the U.S., which is the focus of the Searchinger paper, the acreage planted to major crops, primarily grains and soybeans, is now about 40 million acres less than in 1980, biofuel production notwithstanding. I hope this is not representative of the Frontier Institute’s policy research.
Terry Daynard,
Guelph, Ont.
WHOSE BENEFITS?
To the Editor:
Four articles in the May 17 Western Producer are interconnected as well as interesting.
The George Morris Centre’s Larry Martin and Kate Stiefelmeyer argue that protected sectors of agriculture hinder trade.
The same Martin and Stiefelmeyer argued before the Conservative (agriculture) senate committee for a move away from government subsidies for farmers.
Stiefelmeyer’s vision for the future of farming in Canada includes large farm enterprises, getting “rid of the middle” and small niche farms to service local markets.
Prairie grain farmers will pay 9.5 percent more to ship grain; $90 million farmer profits evaporate.
(Viterra chief executive officer Mayo) Schmidt takes $30 million; assets built by farmers are sold off to an international corporation.
With Statistics Canada figures showing the total goods and services exports falling with expanded trading, from 46 percent GDP in 2000 to 38 percent in 2005 to 31 percent in 2011, are the Conservatives more worried about enshrining business friendly economic rules or making sure that trade rules will actually lead to increased benefits for Canadian farmers?
Will the assets of the CWB accrue to the farmers who invested in them or the government who legislated them out of existence?
Dianne McCollum,
Dunnville, Ont
DOOMED PASTA PLANT
To the Editor:
Alliance Grain Traders recently announced that its plans to build a pasta processing plant in Regina in 2012 is officially on hold at least until next year.
However, AGT’s CEO, Murad Al-Katib, forgot to mention who will be proceeding with the work on implementation once the time is supposedly right, so is there really any realistic concrete time frame for construction to start?
AGT said they could buy grain cheaper from farmers once the Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk was gone.
The single desk will be gone in a few weeks, and AGT has financing in place courtesy of Farm Credit Canada, so why is their plant suspended?
The original 2011 announcement had the likes of Stephen Harper’s faithful followers, including agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities president Dave Merit, Garth Patterson of the Western Grains Research Foundation and Regina mayor Pat Fiacco, applauding the value-added project.
It is hard to believe they didn’t know the plant was hopeless. Were they just currying favour with Harper, or were they jumping gleefully on the bandwagon to avoid Harper’s wrath and retributions?
Will Harper now acknowledge that value-added jobs will not be created once the CWB single desk is scrapped?
Will he amend his repeated statements in the House of Commons that pointed specifically to the now non-existent pasta plant as the source of these bountiful jobs?
If he’s a man of his word and has an ounce of integrity, he will. But like the doomed pasta plant, the probability is small.
Kyle Korneychuk,
Pelly, Sask.
