ANOTHER TRADE OFFER
I was planning to make an offer to the people of Saskatchewan to trade our premier for Brad Wall, but I see that an Alberta resident beat me to the punch.
A few years ago, Saskatchewan went from one of the worst governments in Canada to one of the best.
Here in B.C., we’ve gone far the other way. Alberta offered an old used “liberal” former premier and a few well-worn politicians, so I realize I will have to up the ante.
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I am offering a much younger liberal premier, at least six cabinet ministers, and as an added bonus I will throw in the Vancouver Canucks. If that’s not sufficient, we could maybe throw in a couple of Gulf Islands, a good place for retired farmers to keep warm in winter. In football, sometimes when a team is not performing they trade quarterbacks. Maybe it will work in politics.
Roger Brandl,
Fort St. John, B.C.
PRIVILEGE VS. RIGHT
Re: Bill C-18
Why should there be a law giving us a privilege now when for thousands of years this was a right that no one questioned? That is downgrading that right and the first step to taking it away.
Will the next omnibus bill grant us the privilege to eat breakfast and the one after that grant the privilege to breathe?
Bill C-18 uses the word “privilege” (section 5.3) for farmers to save and clean their own seed. Privilege is the wrong word to use as a privilege is easily revoked.
A right, however, is not so easily taken away. We do not see the grain developers getting any privileges. They are to be given rights.
It should be the right of all Canadians to grow, keep, store, clean, sell and trade their own seed.
For many years now, the large seed companies have been trying to control all of the world’s seed, the ones they have developed and common seed. This is very wrong.
The first people to come to Canada came with small bags of seed to grow and to share with other farmers. These first settlers with their small bags of seed have given Canada one of its biggest industries. Canada exports grain all around the world. The world knows that Canada is a source of safe, top quality agricultural products.
Now is not the time, nor will it ever be the time, for governments to restrict the farmers from doing their best to maintain this reputation and increase the industry.
Do not put the agriculture industry at risk but keep it free to grow. Making complicated laws will only put the whole industry at risk and tie up the court system.
Bill C-18 should be amended to give farmers the inalienable right to keep, clean, store, use and sell their own seed. If the seed developers want to restrict the seed that they have developed, that is up to them, but leave heritage seeds alone and let the farmers choose which seeds they want to use.
Dale and Donna Pope,
Ryley, Alta.
EVERYONE PAYS
Behind the carefully crafted words of Richard Gray’s letter to the editor (WP, April 10) lay a fundamental truth. Farmers would be much better off with a single desk Canadian Wheat Board.
Through the board’s own referendum, farmers showed support for the CWB as a single desk marketing agency. But they voted in droves for (prime minister) Stephen Harper, the man who has cost them billions of dollars. Why? That will be a question for the history books.
A major contribution of the CWB monopoly was orderly marketing: moving grain in such a way that everyone had a chance to sell it, co-ordinating loading at port, ensuring that our best customers were best served and holding the rail lines to account when they failed, even taking them to court on behalf of farmers.
Stephen Harper and his henchmen, (agriculture minister) Gerry Ritz and (MP) David Anderson, have murdered orderly marketing. Especially galling is Anderson’s whining that in the new regime loaders of producer cars and users of short lines are being left behind.
I asked Gerry Ritz about his hurry to be rid of the single desk before the functions of the CWB could be carried on by someone else. There was no answer. There still isn’t.
Those who wanted to eliminate the CWB’s single desk are reaping what they sowed.
Sadly, they aren’t alone. Those who understood the role of the CWB and fought to save it are being equally short-changed, with rail lines and grain companies taking what once belonged to farmers.
It reminds me of a button I saw at the Liberal convention in Montreal. “Don’t blame me, I voted Liberal.”
P.S. I didn’t just vote for them, I was the Liberal candidate in Cypress Hills-Grasslands.
Duane Filson,
MAKE SYSTEM STRONGER
As a 46-year-old grain producer, I have seen all types of ups and downs with transportation in the ongoing grain industry.
I would like to thank all levels of government from the RMs up to the federal government, along with the opposition parties, for legislation that has been put in place for grain movement by the rails to port.
This, I believe, is one step to help protect our long-term customers that depend on us for a steady supply of products that move out of the west.
On that note … other grain producers and other exporting industries, whether potash (or) lumber, and other rail users within Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all depend on the use of this rail to move freight out of Western Canada because it is the only way we have to move freight out of the Prairies to water.
As we grow and export more from the western provinces to our customers, we need to look at other ways to increase the speed and delivery of our freight, whether it be allowing other independent rail companies to run freight on the existing rail or building more pipelines for oil and maybe building another rail line from Regina to the West Coast and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
I realize there is a cost, but it isn’t going to get better or any cheaper in the future as our exports grow, and we should keep building our transport system stronger not poor, and the reason I say this is look at Brazil’s transport problems.
I have travelled to Germany different times to the Hanover ag show and other parts of the country, and when people find out that you are a Canadian farmer, they have lots of good to say about us and our advancements in the agriculture sector, and this doesn’t matter if they are a farmer or equipment salesman or the common person. They do lots of reading and follow the oil industry along with potash and the ag side.
Let’s be strong and listen to our customers that depend on our products by building and moving forward together as a nation as our fathers before us did.
Blaine Muhr,
Francis, Sask.
CONSEQUENCES FOR ALL
Recent letters in The Western Producer highlight some of the problems that grain producers are presently encountering, all in the name of choice and free enterprise.
Would things be any different with the single desk wheat board?
Some opinions suggest yes. Forward planning, expert experience and dedication were the backbone of the single desk CWB.
Although it’s old, there’s a saying that goes something like this: The Conservative government, along with agriculture minister (Gerry) Ritz, and not necessarily the majority of western farmers, have made their bed, and the entire western grain crop producing industry have to sleep in it.
The consequences that were forewarned were ignored. The promised vote was put aside because democracy had taken an extended holiday and has not been seen, or heard from, for several years now.
John Fefchak,
Virden, Man.
