It is with great anticipation that I await the weekly musings of your editorial space, but the opinion column of April 25 cannot and will not go by without some common sense to accompany it.
Your unabashed leanings to the status quo and undying support for the Canadian Wheat Board and the Pools could lead an uniformed observer to think that this was the gospel out in the prairies. You mention that “By every indication the vast majority of Prairie farmers are opposed to the wildcat antics of these border-runners.” What are these indications?
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The “vast majority” of farmers in each province have shown in plebiscites and polls that they are in favor of dual marketing, including the Saskatchewan Government’s own poll. Presumably your definition of someone who is “primarily” a farmer is someone who depends on someone else to look after them.
Here in the real world a farmer has to be a trucker, a commodity broker, a mechanic, a carpenter, an electrician, an agronomist, a manager and, unfortunately, a watchdog to political propaganda. As for “middlemen,” it would seem that farmers wish to remove the legislated army of middlemen between themselves and the consumer in order to put more money in their pockets.
You mention a “tedious process,” which must mean the length of time that it has taken since 1943 to remove a War Measures Act. It would seem that the democratic right to sell wheat and barley to whoever and whenever farmers want has finally pushed some farmers to give up on the political process.
It is appropriate that you use the words “Canadian Wheat Board” and “served farmers so well” in the same sentence as the word “served” is in the past tense. You must mean before the fusarium scandal in Manitoba, or the barley fiasco of last year, or any number of ongoing problems that are caused by the government-controlled monopoly.
It certainly hasn’t been in recent history. …
But I’m sure most Prairie farmers will continue to read the Western Producer for the CWB and NFU press releases which “are getting boringly repetitive, thus worth less space, but we will still be noting them and watching for new developments,”- “in a system that has served farmers so well.”
– Dwayne Leslie,
Portage la Prairie, Man.
