Of course it is painful for Brian Storseth, MP for Westlock-St. Paul, to watch the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) put hundreds of millions of extra dollars in farmers’ pockets each and every year.
But his recent attacks to kill the board are unwarranted.
Perhaps he should put his energy into doing something real and tangible to cut down transportation costs for farmers.
Transportation is part of marketing, and marketing and pricing are not the same thing. Everyone must remember that grain marketing is a business, and the business case for the lakers is one that cannot be ignored.
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The CWB has been involved in the ownership of grain hopper cars since the 1970s, so owning two lakers to continue that transportation link out to the St. Lawrence is not a stretch.
Now grain carried in the farmers’ hopper cars will be transferred onto the farmers’ lakers, with the income earned going right back into the pool accounts.
The CWB estimates that the lakers will pay for themselves in seven years, and after that they will contribute $10 million back into the pooling accounts each year.
The farmers’ hopper cars are putting millions into the pooling accounts each year right now.
Just as with the lakers, some of the farmers that paid for the hopper cars and then retired are not sharing in the current cash benefits, but the hopper cars are rewarding current farmers with service and cash.
The new lakers will carry more grain, and carry it faster with less expense, and a more efficient transportation system means better marketing.
For five long years, Storseth and the Conservative party have been sitting idly by and watching the railways overcharge farmers to the tune of $200 million each and every year. That’s a billion dollars taken away from farmers and the western economy under the Conservative’s watch. Instead of attacking the CWB for putting more money in farmers’ pockets, why don’t Storseth and his well-lobbied friends in Ottawa take action on railway overcharging?
Mandy Melnyk,Waskatenau, Alta.
