Crushing the Canadian Wheat Board
Waldeck - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 by: Henry Neufeld
Prime Minister Harper intends to steam roller his elimination of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) through Parliament shortly. He intends to avoid Agriculture Committee Hearings and fast track Bill C-18 through the unusual use of a Legislative Committee hearing process. This will restrict Parliament’s right to examine this Legislation and to hear from those most affected – The farmers of Western Canada.
Should Harper, Ritz and Anderson be successful in this, we could see the firing of our democratically elected CWB Board of Directors within weeks, only to be replaced by five government stooges who obey the Minister of Agriculture and have no obligation to act in the interests of farmers, but will instead act in the interest of five large corporate Grain Traders and two Railways. ( www.cwbafacts.ca/blog/)
- July 2008: Stephen Harper vows to ‘walk over’ CWB supporters.
- July 23, 2008 Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz sends a secret letter to the CWB instructing the CWB to remove about one-third of the farmer-voters from the voters’ list.
- August 2008: Ritz changes the CWB regulations and removes the spending limits on third party interveners during the election period
- September 2008: Ritz sends a letter and ballot application to farmers/ranchers in western Canada encouraging non-permit book holders to vote. The application will not work for farmers who hold a CWB permit book but have been removed from the voters list.
- September/October 2008: The ballot application posted on the election Coordinator’s website will not work for farmer permit book holders who want to get back on the voters’ list.
- November 2008: Several Conservative MPs directly contravened the Code of Ethics for MPs by sending campaign-style letters directly to farmers from their offices in Ottawa.
- October 7, 2011 – Regina: Harper said “This is a historic change that has been long overdue. It’s time for the Wheat Board and others who have been standing in the way to realize that this train is barreling down a Prairie track. You’re much better to get on it than to lie on the tracks because this is going ahead”
Harper, Ritz and Anderson are making a complete mockery of Canadian Democracy in their headlong goal to hand the whole grain industry over to their Corporate Grain Trading friends and 2 Railways at the expense of farmers.
The Grain Growers of Canada, a group which claims to represent more farmers than there are in all of western Canada, is fond of claiming that without the CWB value adding of grains will increase. It is also a favorite of our Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.
Perhaps Ritz could explain the fact that a major Canadian company, Legumex Walker Inc. is spending $110 million US on a canola crushing plant to be located in Washington State, USA. After all, the CWB has nothing to do with canola, so why is a Canadian company running to the US to build a processing plant when there is so much Canadian-grown canola?
Then we have Larry Martin, George Morris Centre, saying; “Wheat, durum and barley processing sector has been restrained by the single desk, which forces processors to pay more for board grain than if they bought the crops directly from farmers”. (Western Producer October 13.) Is that bad - That the farmers get more for their product through the CWB?
I find it intolerable that the Harper Government has been extolling their role in the removal of an evil Dictator from Libya, while at the same time practicing their own brand of dictatorship here on Canadian Farmers.
