For the next year, this column will mark The Western Producer’s 100th anniversary by taking a deep dive every week into a past issue of the paper.
The Crowsnest Freight Rate, often just called the Crow Rate, was a burning issue on the Prairies in the early 1980s as the federal government moved to increase how much farmers paid to move their grain to port.
The divisiveness of these years is on full display in the Open Forum section of the March 19, 1981, issue.
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Two letters to the editor slammed the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which owned The Western Producer, for reversing its position and supporting the changes to the Crow Rate proposed by the federal government.
“The Pool has lost all credibility as far as it being a democratic organization. I am ashamed to be a member,” wrote Ken Booth of Spiritwood, Sask.
Delegates had voted in favour of the Pool’s new policy position, but the letter writers said the board had strong-armed them into doing so.
When I started working at the Producer in the fall of 1986, my new colleagues were still talking about the fierce debates that had raged in the newsroom just a few years earlier about how to cover this contentious issue.
Speaking of controversial programs, this issue also had a short story about the Saskatchewan Land Bank Commission, which had said that even with a $15 million funding increase in the recent budget, it would still be able to buy only two-thirds of the land that it had been offered.
This program, which had its supporters and its detractors, was eventually disbanded after the Progressive Conservatives replaced the NDP as government in 1982.
And still on the subject of delegates, those attending the Federated Co-operatives Ltd. convention voted to oppose changes to the Crow Rate and tabled a resolution opposing plant breeders’ rights.
It’s hard to imagine these types of subjects being debated at today’s FCL conventions.
And in another milestone, this is the first issue I’ve run across that sported a colour photo on the front page.
