Tisdale Harvest Valley Terminal and Soil Tech at 4:45 PM, Thursday, June 14, 2012
Shameful
Waldeck - Friday, June 15, 2012
by: Joyce Neufeld
The contemptuous treatment of Canadian farmers and citizens by the Harper Conservatives is unbelievable! It should make most who voted Tory cringe in shame.
Harper, Ritz and Anderson destroyed the Canadian Wheat Board which was operated by a board of farmers elected by farmers, paid for by farmers and worked on the behalf of all farmers.
They reduced the role of the Canadian Grain Commission, which protected farmers from unscrupulous grading by grain companies.
More recently they cut the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration which operates 85 Community Pastures, water management, grants for wells and dugouts and also provided trees for farms, community development, municipal governments. These pastures continually moved their bulls around, thus elimination the need for farmers/ranchers buying expensive breeding bulls every few years.
Ritz (minister of agriculture) had the gall to announce that the government was setting up a $25 million dollar grant (All taxpayer money) to boost the amount of grain shipped through the Port of Churchill. Who will get this money – certainly not the farmers? It will go to the likes of Pioneer Grain (Richardson’s) with terminal at Vancouver, Thunder Bay and Prince Rupert: Alliance Grain Terminal (Vancouver and Thunder Bay); Parrish & Heimbecker (Vancouver and Thunder Bay); Cargill (Vancouver, Thunder Bay and Prince Rupert); Viterra ( Vancouver, Thunder Bay and Prince Rupert); ADM (Thunder Bay) and OmniTrax Rail. Is anyone naïve enough to think that these corporation will utilize Churchill when they already own terminals at other Ports?
Add to this, the thousands of people they have fired, the changes to the Employment Insurance and increased eligibility for OAS (Old Age Security) from 65 to 67. They have proven without a doubt, that their loyalty lies with the corporate sector of the world and not the Canadian citizen. At the same time they have reduced the corporate tax rate from 21% (2007) to 15% (2012). Small wonder they have deficit budgets.
