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Illegally gained goods
Waldeck
March 12, 2016
by: Joyce Neufeld
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On February 16, 2016, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair asked Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay “When he would restore the Canadian Wheat Board”, now that the evidence is in that the private grain companies had taken $6.5 billion from grain farmers in the last two years. 

The Minister’s answer must have shocked Mulcair and certainly should have shocked western farmers. Yes, he said the Wheat Board had been sold (reminding Conservatives that a contract is a contract) and he would not be seizing assets, no matter how they were disposed of from G3, which is the combo of Saudi Arabia and Bunge, one of the world’s giant private grain companies. The fact that this response triggered a standing ovation from Conservative M Ps speaks volumes.

 
In October 2011, Liberal Agriculture and Agri-Food Critic Frank Valeroite and Liberal Deputy Leader and former minister responsible for the CWB, Ralph Goodale said “The government’s decision to kill single desk selling is a clear violation of the Canadian Wheat Board Act, which insists on democratic producer control. The Act also insists that any changes to the CWB must be made in consultation with their Board of Directors and with farmers directly, something this government has blatantly refused to do.”
 
When bill C-18 was recently tested in the Federal Court, Judge Douglas Campbell, on December 7, 2011, ruled that the Federal Minister of Agriculture, Ritz violated terms of the existing Canada Wheat Board Act by failing to hold a vote among producers about his proposal to end the CWB’s monopoly on wheat and barley sales  In other words, the CWB was then ‘Illegally gained goods’
 
So, what in fact Macaulay and the Liberal Government is saying is that it is okay for corporate interests to keep ‘illegally gained goods” leaving western grain farmers to suffer the consequences.
 
In spite of the Liberal election promises, we now find that the Trudeau government and the new Minister of Agriculture, like the “Emperor with no clothes” stand revealed, as no friends of Western grain farmers.
 
Don’t tell us that the majority of us are happy with “marketing freedom”, because there has yet to be a referendum that proves it.
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