This essay by publisher Morris Dorosh is reprinted with permission from the Dec. 18, 2006 issue of Agriweek.
In politics it is not the truth that counts. It is what people can be made to believe. If enough people believe it, it becomes the truth. If a thing is repeated often enough and energetically enough, no matter whether it is true or not, people will usually begin to believe it and then it becomes the truth. People are more inclined to believe what they want to believe instead of inconvenient truths, generally things that fit their prejudices, habits and outlooks. Different people can observe the same facts and come to completely opposite conclusions. Supporters of one point of view are routinely appalled by the inability of holders of another point to see the truth as they see it.
Politics sucks. The western grain marketing situation is pure 100% politics. It really sucks.
The following statements are verifiable facts. The Canadian Wheat Board is a government agency because the Government of Canada owns its assets and is responsible for its liabilities. The Wheat Board is not a corporation unless it is a crown corporation because it is owned by the government. If it were a corporation but not a crown corporation it would have shareholders. If it had shareholders they would not elect directors on the basis of one vote per person but on the basis of one vote per share.
The Canadian Wheat Board does not obtain any price premium for wheat and barley, since any farmer can take almost any sample to almost any elevator in North Dakota and be offered a better price than that promised by the Wheat Board.
The Canadian Wheat Board is not controlled by farmers because its directors, elected and appointed alike, serve at the discretion of the federal cabinet. If it were not so the directors of the Canadian Wheat Board would have it in their power to expose the taxpayers of Canada to liabilities of billions of dollars without responsibility nor accountability to the taxpayers.
The duty of the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board is to represent, and especially to protect, the interests of the only shareholder this peculiar entity has.
These are facts. No director elections and no number of press releases blizzarded by the Wheat Board propaganda contraption can change them. Nothing gives those directors passionately obsessed by their monopoly power any license to continue to thwart the intentions or authority of their owner.
The present situation with Wheat Board governance is exactly the same as if every owner of a General Motors vehicle had one vote in the annual election of directors of General Motors Corp., and the owners of General Motors stock were expected to accept the results and all ensuing
consequences.
The Wheat Board and the supporters of its lead-pipe monopoly have no cause to chortle. In a country where the rights of tiny minorities, sometimes a fraction of 1% of the population, are assiduously protected and guarded, it is inconceivable that the rights of a minority as large as 40% can be ignored and trampled, which is precisely what the anti-choice forces want to keep doing. It is not possible to give monopoly supporters what they want without abusing the rights of monopoly opponents. Furthermore, the government which grants a monopoly has the moral authority to continue it or to remove it at will.
Many things are missing here. If the monopoly is so widely supported and preferred, why its there not a general, persistent movement, comparable in durability to the pro-choice movement, to put all western crops under monopoly marketing control? Why is no one demanding that Ontario and Quebec grains be put under the same monopoly? Why is no farm organization advocating the replacement of vulnerable supply-management marketing boards with a government agency such as the Wheat Board? Why has it not even crossed anyone’s mind that agencies should be created on the Wheat Board model to market, say, lumber, coal, iron ore or crude oil?
The process of terminating the monopoly has not been well handled. Anyone could have predicted the storm of protest from fanatic pro-monopoly quarters to the suggestion that the government has the right to remove a privilege it has granted. The only thing on which there is any agreement is that farmers should have a vote.
And so they should. But it is time for some common sense. Eligibility should be the same as for the director elections. However, the voter list provided by the Wheat Board should include the quantity of wheat and barley sold by each permit holder in the last two completed crop years. The results should be tabulated in two ways. One count should be on the present, however improper, basis of one-man (or -woman) one vote. The other should be according to the amount of grain sold by each voter, or one tonne one vote, representing the relative economic interest of farmers subject to the single desk monopoly. The Wheat Board has the necessary information.
The results would go a long way to resolving this. It doesn’t look like anything else will.
I still firmly believe that the CWB is a cash cow for the coffers of the Lieberal Party of Canada. Why else would the previous Lieberal governments have protected the board, and Citoyen Dion make the statement that if the board is dismantled, he will reinstate it as soon as he becomes Prime Minister.What’s in it for them? Why do they fight against having the books opened? What are they afraid of coming to light….cash stuffed brown envelopes being handed out?
so what youre saying Kate is the cwb has existed thru numerous political regimes including Conservative ones.
so why the hoopla how great the CPs are if they play along to get along?
“In politics it is not the truth that counts. It is what people can be made to believe…..”
This opening paragraph is so true. It applies to just about any political debate one hears; from Koyoto, to Health Care, to Tax Rediction, to Gun Control, War on Terror, Etc..
In countless Liberal Policy issues the truth is suppressed and the LIE is the Truth. George Orwell knew them so well. George came to know them in the Spanish civil war. He began that conflict as a devoted Communist.
The Canadian public has a frightening disability in critical thinking. These BLOGs are our only hope.
I am not familiar with this publication called Agriweek. But whatever it may be, it’s not quite the Western Producer.
“…the voter list provided by the Wheat Board should include the quantity of wheat and barley sold by each permit holder in the last two completed crop years. The results should be tabulated…according to the amount of grain sold by each voter, or one tonne one vote, representing the relative economic interest of farmers subject to the single desk monopoly.”
Good idea. But why wait until yields are tallied to proportionally distribute voting rights? Why not distribute influence on potential yields based on how much land you own? After all, no one ever claimed feudalism was inefficient.
so why the hoopla how great the CPs are if they play along to get along?
I thought moonbats were big on compromise.
“no one ever claimed that feudalism was inefficient. If no one has, then it is only because it was so self evident that it was not necessary to.
What about all the farmers who’ve decreased or eliminated board crop from their rotations? With votes based on board grains delivered, you’ve eliminated them from the vote, but handcuffed them with the results.
This fall I sold malt quality barley to cattle feeders for 25 cents a bushel more than the board pool return outlook(PRO) had for supposedly superior quality malt barley.
Dorosh states: “In politics it is not the truth that counts. It is what people can be made to believe. If enough people believe it, it becomes the truth. If a thing is repeated often enough and energetically enough, no matter whether it is true or not, people will usually begin to believe it and then it becomes the truth. People are more inclined to believe what they want to believe instead of inconvenient truths, generally things that fit their prejudices, habits and outlooks. Different people can observe the same facts and come to completely opposite conclusions. Supporters of one point of view are routinely appalled by the inability of holders of another point to see the truth as they see it.
Politics sucks.”
Wow, do you have to think about the crystal clarity of that statement? A perusal of the comments on SDA on any given day confirms it.
Politics does suck and when people/voters drop politics and political branding and stop having their political brand name do their reasoning, a lot if civil injustice can be conquered.
Without partisan/tribal politics we would have:
No government marketing or retail monopolies.
No Private monolopies
extended Laissez fair Capitalism
much smaller government and bureaucracies
an effective parliament
But as long as partisan politics can substitute a dogmatic template for free reason and civil objectivity, we will continue to squabble amongst ourselves in little waring tribes while politically sheilded preditors pick our pockets and steal our freedoms.
The CWB is a great example of a predatory marketing cabal camouflage its stench with bureaucratic secrecy and governmental force. One of the most vivid mental images for me was that of RCMP marching a half clothed barely awake Andy McMeken off to jail in a late night “raid” on his farm as his family looked on in horror from his ransacked farm house….all this for selling his grain to a buyer of his choice. It was a snapshot of state sanctioned terrorism and the brutality of government marketing monopolies.
What was not as obvious in that snapshot of blind regulatory force destroying a family, was the fact it was the product of a deadly mixture of big government and politics.
As this excellent Dorosh article states; “politics sucks”….its past time we started dealing with government not as partisans but as citizens being crushed under an ever growing weight of regulation and bureaucratic political tyranny.
Left out of the debate over the CWB and its secretive pricing policies, is the fact that the end consumer of such a state regulated commodity never pays the true market value of his daily bread because of government policy…he pays an artificially inflated price to support a bloated government bureaucracy which chokes the supply chain…..and it doesn’t get much more “political” than that and that “sucks”.
Blue Drew you hit nail on the head with the weighted vote as long as there no attachment of vote for the landlord it should be active farmers only.
Some years back I saw a reference to the late Jack Pickergill, who was in politics when the CWB was formed, saying that its original purpose was to prevent the prairie farmers from ripping off the starving Brits during the war. If true, the bureaucracy reinvented itself in a hurry when the war ended.
The preamble to the 1947 changes to the CWB Act
“Whereas the Government of Canada has entered into an arrangement with the Government of the United Kingdom for the sale and delivery of substantial quantities of wheat to the Government of the United Kingdom annually for a period of four years ……and it is necessary to make provision for the carrying out of the arrangement; and whereas it is expedient to amend The Canadian Wheat Board Act, 1935, for such purpose……. ”
Lightly researched article in the Economist that supports Harper’s position:
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8525822
Monopolies breed complacency.
The charging of freight to the port for locally processed wheat and barley must stop to create more value added industries at the source. {Western Canada}
The CWB needs to be changed no doubt about it….but the BS still keeps coming from ALL quarters!
Dorosh himself take liberties with facts :
“”….The Canadian Wheat Board does not obtain any price premium for wheat and barley, since any farmer can take almost any sample to almost any elevator in North Dakota and be offered a better price than that promised by the Wheat Board. “”
This is Verifiable if the board’s records opened and that’s the kind of thing that needs to be changed.
Maybe true at any given time frame …right now for instance ….. Not all the time!
Also …well and good for a farmer close to the border……not so much fro one that has to transport any distance!
Also….how many Grain Buyers are there? How many elevator operators? Do farmers really believe they have enough competition in this area to keep their prices fair?
Fix the problems!
Hey, OMMAG
it’s fairly easy to go back on grain prices and show us when the CWB was higher than the US prices, so why don’t you post some of these instances….I challenge you to show even one time when the CWB was paying us more for our wheat and barley than they were getting in the states.
If the CWB is such hot idea, why isn’t there a CWB in the eastern provinces? After all, whats good for the goose and all that.
Why not an eastern wheat marketing monopoly?…Well because it would probably violate the charter of Rights and Freedom!…Out here in the west they just keep feeding us the same sh*t and we take it just like the lowly serfs the east wants us to be…different strokes for different folks or in this case different parts of the country. I’m sure if Quebec were in the west’s shoes re grain marketing, they would be very happy…..for about 3 seconds
The more they resist the closing of the CWB the more I think its time for the revolution.
Tim ..I’ll take that challenge if you do the same!
Let me put this CWB ‘marketing’ thingy in perspective by quoting from an old story.
“To better understand the changes that have taken place in oats marketing in the last 40 years, let us look at why oats was put under the CWB in 1947…….
At the time, oats was the SECOND most important crop on the prairies and oats exports were roughly equal to barley exports on an annual basis…..
In the mid-1940s, the world was generally experiencing a shortage of grain, as the war recently ended…..
Since grain prices during and after the war were high, the federal gov’t had placed ceilings on oats and barley prices so Canadian livestock feeders would not have to pay overly high prices for their feed. This was more correct for Eastern Canadian feeders who purchased their feed oats and barley from the West, than for Western livestock feeders who generally grew their own grain at the time……..
Export licenses were issued for the export of oats and barley so that the government would be able to control the supplies of these feed grains and ensure that sufficient quantities would be available for domestic users. ……..
By 1947 the gov’t wished to remove the wartime price and marketing restrictions. However, the continuing tight supplies of grain world wide, with the corresponding high prices, presented the opportunity for Western Canadian oats and barley prices to increase substantially under the open market after the controls were lifted……..
This however, would not be a popular decision Eastern Canadian livestock feeders since they preferred the situation whereby they were assured ample supplies of Western Canadian feed grain at below world market prices…….
(The govt) decided to put the control of marketing of oats and barley grown in Western Canada under the authority of the CWB so as to ensure the price fixed and set by the gov’t through the CWB would not go too high and hence upset Eastern Canadian livestock feeders…..
Oats and barley grown in Eastern Canada escaped this regulation, as is currently the situation…..
Farm groups at the time were mixed in their reaction to this new policy. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, dominated by Eastern Canadian farm groups, was strongly in support of CWB marketing of oats and barley from Western Canada to Eastern Canada. The Prairie Wheat Pools were part of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and they too, asked for the CWB to market these grains……..
On the other hand the United Grain Growers,….was strongly opposed to this policy since it felt that Western Canadian feed grain producers would be forced to provide feed grain to Eastern Canadian feeders at below world market prices as happened during the war. It feared the CWB would become an instrument of the federal gov’t, implementing regional development policies which may not be in the best long-term interests of the Prairie grain farmers……
Incidently, in 1947, this was all meant to be a temporary policy implemented only until conditions returned to normal after the booming economic conditions of the post-war era. The legislated mandate of the CWB was set to formally expire on July 31, 1950.”
Two points I want to make:
It was never, never, ever the mandate of the CWB to ‘maximize returns to the producer’. That was (and is) a lie from day one, perpetrated by dishonest people who should know better.
The real purpose of the CWB in the 1940s was to control the stocks of grain in Canada thereby controlling the grain prices. Hold large stocks when prices were high on the world market, and sell (give away) all the grain you can when prices are cheap because it doesn’t make any difference to Eastern livestock feeders and consumers.
This has been exactly the CWB ‘marketing plan’ since the 1940s. And still continues today with the CWB withdrawing from the world market in 1996/97 and in 2002/03, when grain prices approached historically high prices. And anyone who tries to tell you that the CWB returns a premium price on any grain is either a liar, or just plain ignorant about how the CWB actually markets your grain. (And I am not thinking of any egghead academics or Premiers here. Heh)
The whole article is in the Feb Grainews, 1989, for anybody interested. And I really do feel sorry for all the diehard CWB supporters who have been duped for all these years. They could have been rich if it wasn’t for the CWB either not selling their grain, or just giving it away.
And that’s a verifiable fact.
More QUADROTRIKAKELLIE shipped direct from SHERMANS PLANET and these no tribbles infesting it
How many notice the little window on the cwb site that says “the canadian wheat board is the marketing choice for western canadian wheat and barley farmers”? …..Look quick!
I guess that pretty much summ’s up who’s in the commie thing!
If you want this albetros to fly, then put every farmer in kanukistan under it, east and west, so we can all enjoy the benefits of this commie corp. My bet is that it’s dead within a week of that happening!
I can get more for my malt barley selling it as feed than these idiots managed to get with the manopoly they brag about. WOW!
And then there is so many other wonderful benifits, like the stealing 500,000 out of the pool account and calling it stress bonus for cwb employees. This was management acting like spoiled brats, rather than working for farmers!
How about algeria, admitting they like dealing with the cwb because they can buy grain for tens of dollars less per tonne than they can from anyone else. How many more countrys do the same thing???
Does that sound like the western cwb is extracting all they can with this so called monopoly?? Sounds more like dumping to me!
Lets OPEN the books Mr. Harper!
BRAVO Rockyt!! at last, someone has lifted a bit more of the iron curtain of lies and deceit Ottawa has subjected western grain farmers to for over 60 years….is there any way we can launch a class action lawsuit to get back the money this predjucial pricing system has cost western Canada?…..Going to court seems to work for our First Nations friends….
“But as long as partisan politics can substitute a dogmatic template for free reason and civil objectivity, we will continue to squabble amongst ourselves in little waring tribes while politically sheilded preditors pick our pockets and steal our freedoms.”
We could go a long way to ending this by abolishing the party Whips. Of course, getting rid of the Whip position is something of a Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Valster, The Merchant Law Firm already has a class action lawsuit against the CWB to get back prairie farmers money. Right now, the process is at the Judicial Review stage to determine the legality aspects. The government and CWB have been fighting tooth and nail to avoid this by claiming they have no accountability to farmers.
In a nutshell, Part IV was put in as an export/import tax in 1947 with the prceeds to government and collecting costs to be paid by government.
Ever since NAFTA, there is no income into Part IV because it is to be only based on the difference between the government set price in Canada and the world price. Therefore ALL NATIONAL PART IV costs should be paid by the government instead of by prairie farmers. CWB administration costs are in the millions.
Thanks John….Here’s hoping they are successful.Has there been any work done on trying to fight this monopoly on the basis of regional discrimination and/or predjudice toward western grain farmers? It seems to me that when an industry in one part of the country makes money at the expense of another ” designated” area in that country, certain Rights and Freedoms are being violated….or if the CWB claims not to be responsible to prairie farmers, how about charging them with theft of private property?
There was a multi-million dollar Charter challenge by a group of farmers and financed by the Alberta Barley Commission in the 90s.
However, they challenged the legislation, missed the true discrimination and the fact that the so-called “monopoly” legislation applies equally in the East.
On the other hand, the Merchant case does not challenge the legislation but rather the administration or policy of the CWB bureaucrats and opens the door to exposing the licencing discriminatory practices of the CWB.
Hello guys! I have some questions. I mean need some help.
Where i can read more about this problema?
Please, don’t derect me to http://google.com i know about it.
Please derect me with some links.
thanks!
UCAKK^^
There are lots of good postings by Kate the last month or so.
http://lame.name/hardcoreindia
hello guys
All I know is that the farmers in my area are pissed. Pissed at the Fed’s that are treating them like they are stupid and have no right to decide for themselves what is in their best interest. They feel they should control their destiny. They want a fair discussion and debate and a vote that actually matters. They don’t feel that the feds are giving them that. It’s their livelihood and they want a say. Groups formed to support their position are limited to 10,000 spending and their up against a gov’t with unlimited funds. On top of that the gov’t has ordered their elected representatives to shut up.
All they want is an honest discussion on their benefits on going to the free market.
Les
Les, I’m not happy either. I don’t want you and your pissed off neighbours voting on how I market what I grow. There should not even be a vote.
Les, The feds, under Mr. Harper are trying to give farmers choice, it’s the oppostition that doesn’t want change. As in the liebrals and dippers. Where did meisner go trotting off to for help? His liebral masters thats where! and got his arse canned for his trouble…twould appear they need to can a few more over the theft of 500,000 of farmers money and called it a stress bonus….What they really should do is order it payed back….if they were farmers, thats what they would be told to do!
Les
More facts would not automatically increase reality. Because the poeple who believe the myth do not believe the facts. The facts are and the reality is, that the CWB has served,and continues to serve:
The industry, the world and the employees better than the farmers.
Proponents of the myth finds its’ common denominator in less, Les, nor more. The
reality is we take comfort in the fact “the neighbour cannot get more that I do.” At the end of the day when we peel back the truth, support lies in the fact that we like the theory (we all get the same comrad) even when facts would suggest the lowest common denominator rules the day.
Which is why we ignore facts, and Richard Gray studies get headlines of how we get better value to barley sales even when feed barley can be sold for more money than malt barley through the board.
Myth and reality in this arena are not distinguishable to normally fluent minds.
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