A 10-hour standoff between federal food inspectors and a local egg farmer backed by 40 landowners ended Thursday evening when thousands of confiscated eggs and chickens – many dead or dying after going hours without ventilation or water – were released back to the owner.
Inspectors who raided the County Road 21 farm near the Grenville-Dundas County border allege Shawn Carmichael, owner of Carmichael Poultry Farm at 317 County Road 21, had been selling ungraded or improperly graded eggs and lacked proper registration for his operation.
But investigators were prevented from taking the confiscated property away and had to settle instead with dozens of bird carcasses and a carton of eggs to use as evidence.
They also made a commitment to return Carmichael’s financial records after making copies for their purposes.
“Whatever happens to me (in the courts) will happen but at least I stood up and was counted,” said Carmichael, a husband and father of six children, who sparked the standoff about 1 p.m. when he parked a tractor at the entrance of his driveway to prevent the inspectors from leaving.
“You get to the stage where you say, ‘I’ve got to stand up for myself here. I’ve got to stand up for my family,'” he said.
“Then I see people who care and will help a guy like me. That gives me a lot. It makes me feel like I’m not alone.”
Earlier, when more than 20 inspectors and enforcement workers from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), accompanied by six OPP officers and agents with the Egg Marketing Board of Ontario, launched a raid on the property at 9 a.m., Carmichael and his wife Paula felt totally isolated.
[…]
He said he was stunned watching the inspectors go through his house, including the children’s bedrooms, searching for evidence while chickens and eggs were being seized and loaded on a transport trailer and other trucks.
About four hours into the raid after the first couple of supporters from the Leeds and Grenville Landowners Association arrived at the farmgate where they were met by OPP, Carmichael got in a tractor and drove it to the end of a 300-metre driveway to block the exit.
The action set up a showdown that mushroomed as the afternoon went on until dozens of supporters, including Ontario Landowners Association president Randy Hillier, arrived with their familiar “Back off Government” signs and took up position at the end of the driveway.
The OPP responded in kind and eventually had more than 20 cruisers on hand, including several that established roadblocks at the nearest intersections, and about 30 officers keeping an eye on the activities.
[…]
Harry Pelissero, general manager for the Ontario Egg Producers, said Carmichael faces charges of selling ungraded eggs, unlawful possession of laying hens and failing to pay his licensing fees.
Preempting the question “Where were the cops?” next time there’s a gangland gun battle on Yonge Street.
If this was any other organization except government they would be called terrorists, so why don’t we call a spade a spade. The largest terrorist organization in Canada is the Government of Canada. Next comes the prov gov’s. This is typical of big brother bureaucrats and their lacky’s weilding a big stick.
Marketing boards are supposed to give us stable pricing. Thats easy enough to do when the price is doubble the compitition and protected. Because they are able to beat the transgressors into submition this is supposed to make the rest of us feel safe?
Before Comrad Barcs and his Bolshie friends run me into the ground ( from the shadows ) keep in mind that in 2000 Afganistan as long as you obeyed the teleban and or their terrorist friends you were safe as well.
Them that can, do.
Them that can’t, teach.
Them that can’t teach, join the government.
Tony (CA) Whiteley
Chemainus BC
If this was any other organization except government they would be called terrorists, so why don’t we call a spade a spade. The largest terrorist organization in Canada is the Government of Canada. Next comes the prov gov’s. This is typical of big brother bureaucrats and their lacky’s weilding a big stick.
Marketing boards are supposed to give us stable pricing. Thats easy enough to do when the price is doubble the compitition and protected. Because they are able to beat the transgressors into submition this is supposed to make the rest of us feel safe?
Before Comrad Barcs and his Bolshie friends run me into the ground ( from the shadows ) keep in mind that in 2000 Afganistan as long as you obeyed the teleban and or their terrorist friends you were safe as well.
Them that can, do.
Them that can’t, teach.
Them that can’t teach, join the government.
Tony (CA) Whiteley
Chemainus BC
This kind of !@#$ is why one of my cousins decided to go into dairy goats rather than cows — no quota required for goat’s milk in New Brunswick.
Sorry about the duplication. Too old to get this excited. Pushed the wrong button.
FYI: Houston prices… 1/2 gal milk, 4 for $5, Eggs Grade AA Large, 10 for $10 (Lucerne eggs btw). Can’t get a price on cheese sorry.
The whole crap with marketing boards is just that: crap. Just look at some of the rules that are made to “protect” the poor quebec dairy farmer. Anywhere else in Canada and there would be hell to pay. Yellow margarine? sacrebleu!!! And of course let’s not forget the Wheat Board and their monopoly out west. To sell a truckload of your own wheat will land you in jail but defrauding the federal government of $$$ will get you a curfew and a speaking engagement tour. Unless it was a pot bust, a swat team for a chicken wrangler (but not a chicken rustler) is a bit over the top if you ask me.
I never said there was no money. I said that several people have failed. Florian and Ivan are both good guys. Florian even bought the barn south of my house that went under (course he only paid about what the pigs were worth to get the entire business)
You aren’t the only sector to want the government out. I’d like to have them out of mine too, I even participated in a C-CARIN government industry conference on how to manage subsidies for sectors, I told them I didn’t want to create a system wher noone can fail… but subsidies paid elsewhere in the world mean I need a little help to compete too.
Heheh Comrade Barcs… I argue against 90% of social programs… and I get accused of being a commie for aruing for one… Hell I live in Saskatchewan maybe one of the unions *cringes* would like to take the government to task and require paid management wages for anyone farming. senority and all the other perks. If you are so against this one program, maybe SGI, healthcare childcare, Power and unions should be privitised too. Hell lets privitize the army too.
Barcs…Why in the world should taxpayers give you one thin dime, let alone pay you management wages? And let me get this straight: you argue against social programs, except those that benefit yourself? How typically, hypocriticaly Conservative.
Barcs, Thanks for the good debate. Maybe someday we will meet and have a coffee. 😉
Bye
Meanwhile, in Hamilton a gang of aboriginals have taken possession of a section of land slated for a subdivision, claiming the developer didn’t buy it from the correct authority, chief or tribal mommy. Who can keep track of these ploys?
Every night on the news the latest mouthpiece appears and mumbles the usual pretentious boilerplate, delivered in that oh so dignified. sonorous tone.
The court has ordered them to move and the OPP has had the legal right – it’s their job! – to enforce this since last week but is showing “restraint” according to the aboriginals.
Funny, the OPP has no shortage of enthusiasm when it comes to straightening out some outlaw egg vendor.
Love to uncleshred, I love talking out issues with persons of some knowledge. Everyone is entitiled to there opinion so long as they can form an intelligent argument to back it up. And you have atleast done a good job of aruguing your side. That is worther of respect 🙂
…………………………….
I was gonna call it left wing zuma, but on reflection you are essentially correct tho.
Conservatives want only to benifit themselves and screw the rest of the world if they don’t want to stand on their own….. While Democrats want only to screw everyone else to pity a few who can’t, and more who aren’t interested in standing on their own.
(so long as you don’t take anything away from them while they are helping others)
OPP Investigates Confrontation at Egg Farm
Josh Pringle with Norman Jack
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
The Ontario Provincial Police are considering charges against members of the Lanark Landowners Association in connection with that confrontation at a Spencerville egg farm last week.
Police were escorting federal officials on the farm of Shawn Carmichael, alleging he was selling ungraded eggs, and more eggs than allowed under his quota.
However, a telephone call brought out about 40 members of the association, who blocked officials from removing Carmichael’s laying hens. +
cfra.com
“Preempting the question “Where were the cops?” next time there’s a gangland gun battle on Yonge Street.”
Fluck the Landowners; they are criminals. +
3 more shootings in Toronto the Good while the kumbaya crew shuffle their feet and twiddle their thumbs….more details later.
Update -now there’s a 4th shooting tonight. That gun registry seems to be working like a charm while some politicians still have their heads in the sand, won’t acknowledge the extent of the problem and are unwilling to take the necessary steps to curtail it.+
via newsbeat1.com
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/city/story.html?id=277a4859-bdc0-465d-aa06-4daa3568d39a&p=2
“To produce eggs on a large commercial scale, a farmer must acquire a quota, the going rate for which is currently $175 per laying hen. If Mr. Carmichael has 9,000 hens, as the Ontario Egg Producers group claims, that quota would cost $1,575,000.”
~~~
Let’s put this into some perspective and ask why *some* farmers want the supply management system to continue working *just the way it has been*, thank you very much;)
They have a hold on the ability to prevent competition from up and comers who would be forced to buy new quotas, if available even, at $175 per hen!!!
This system came into being in the mid 1960’s.
Global business will challenge, IS challenging, these ‘closed’ preferential systems, as being too restrictive and costly to cross border trade.
The old boys club of quota systems is perhaps legal, but has a heavy-handed, wink-wink, approach as shown this weekend.
If it won’t be changed from the inside, external pressures will bring some sense of true FAIR trade to bear.
It may not happen in time for this particular farmer, but he certainly has opened the public’s eyes to legislated sledgehammers against the freedom to do business in a democratic country.
By the way, 350 chickens were killed in the manhandling on the weekend. That translates to $61,250 in that quota system.
And it isn’t a conservative or liberal or ndp issue.
*Some* farmers only want to make a living for their families, and supply a product that clearly has a market.
Well when it takes the cops 3 hours to show up when a gang is brawling behind my house it’s nice to know they have priorities.
Part of the liberal push for more vigilanties.
Suspects: White, red, yellow, green, black ….. ?
RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STARPolice stand guard over the scene of a fatal shooting at a pizza shop on Weston Rd. last night. It was one of three separate shootings in a four-hour span. +
http://www.voy.com/178771/8120.html
Police are looking for two suspects in that shooting, last seen leaving the scene in a light blue, newer model Toyota Corolla.
Raian Naidoo, 22, is 5-foot-5, 120 pounds, with braided hair, a goatee, moustache and a mole on his face. Dwayne Wesley Donaldson, 23, is 5-foot-6 and 160 pounds.
With files from Amy Brown-Bowers and Hilda Hoy +
http://www.voy.com/178771/8120.html
via primetimecrime.com
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
White and red chickens: no names; over 500 dead. Cops stood guard; over 20 OPP police cruisers at the scene.
Suspects got away; escorted to Hwy. 416 by OPP police. +
Tense standoff between OPP and farmers over raid on chicken farm
Last updated Mar 24 2006 05:11 PM EST
At one point, he said, there were 20 Ontario Provincial Police cruisers on the scene Thursday afternoon after two search warrants had been issued by a justice of the peace. +
http://www.cbc.ca/ottawa/story/ot-standoff20060323.html
via primetimecrime.com
I don’t see anyone concerned about the actions of Hillier or his cronies. He reportedly ordered – and they obeyed – one fellow to strike a police officer with a tractor.
The readers of this site and others in the Free Dominion vein often are schizophrenic about police officers: they are the jackboot lackeys of “power barons” (that’s a rich one from back in the commie hippie days)when they are enforcing laws the readers don’t agree with; they are heroes and paragons of virtue as unassailable as the Virgin Mary when engaged in the righteous prosecution of their investigation of scumbags guilty of transgressing those laws the readers do agree with.
What’s it to be? Do we live in a society of laws and process or an anarchy of free choice at the buffet of laws we like and don’t like?
Phred, only someone very foolish would stand under a loader’s scoop, ever, at the best of times or in front of a moving tractor.
But “striking” with a tractor…really, striking with a tractor!
This was a heated confrontation, a blocking of the driveway so chickens could not be hauled off.
It is acknowledged things escalated, but this took two to tangle and both sides did come to their senses.
We live in a society where *some* have been given the right to market their product, cutting *other* farmers out of it entirely…not because they aren’t good farmers, but because they *can* be shut out.
This is one law being tested, and testing never happens without trial and tensions.
…dunno but to give the OPP some grace, and another view, did anyone think maybe the chicken man would snap and start shooting his semi-registered handgun at the cops?
Shades of Ludwig farm in Alberta.
But yeah, much safer chasing after chickens then being a chicken at a gang fight…
Ludwig shot and killed a young girl who was on his property with a group of young people…tragic for sure.
And he vandalized gas wells, but don’t recall that he shot at police. I suspect he might never have made it to prison, but to his grave, had he done so.
The comparisons between the two farmers don’t work so clearly for me.
Viral outbreak closes largest area pig farm Producer must spend
By NICK GARDINER
Staff Writer
SPENCERVILLE — A killing strain of pig virus has forced the area’s biggest producer to shut down his operation and start all over again.
“We got emptied out a week ago and we won’t refill our barn until May 1,” said hog farmer Geri Kamenz, whose herd normally tops 2,000 animals.
“We’re going to be down going on six weeks for total fumigation, cleansing, disinfectant and emptying and liming the pits.”
The drastic action is being taken by Kamenz in response to the arrival of a deadly strain of porcine circovirus that has devastated the pig industry in Ontario and Quebec.
In Ontario, eight to 12 per cent of the herd has died from the disease, about six times the normal mortality rate.
Kamenz said the mortality rate at his breeding farm reached almost six per cent before he shut it down.
He said the rate is lower than the provincial average because the industry is small in eastern Ontario and there is less interaction with other producers. +
http://newsfeed.recorder.ca/cgi-bin/LiveIQue.acgi$rec=17405
Kamenz is a vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA).
http://www.paulding.net/bin/url.cgi/13235.27
OFA
RE: “To produce eggs on a large commercial scale, a farmer must acquire a quota, the going rate for which is currently $175 per laying hen. If Mr. Carmichael has 9,000 hens, as the Ontario Egg Producers group claims, that quota would cost $1,575,000.”
~~~
By the way, 350 chickens were killed in the manhandling on the weekend. That translates to $61,250 in that quota system.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffalo Bean,
I knew egg quotas were high but this is obscene. For those of you that don’t understand, the quota price is the price set by supply and demand, farmers will pay for PERMISSION to get into the business. This does not buy you any equipment or land at all. NONE, ZIP!!! All your equipment costs comes afterwards.
Folks, this is purely and simply the price that egg farmers themselves have said it is worth to be able to get into the government sanctioned, police enforced, �egg price-fixing cartel� This is corrupt.
The consumers of this country should rise up in massive protest.
Whoops, you’re right, I meant Roszko at Rochfort Bridge where the 4 RC’s were shot last year.
Dunno why Ludwig was on the brain…
Ontario loves their gov’t bureaucracy to control everything. That way they don’t have to think.
Good enough for their ancestors, good enough for today, YAY-Y-Y!
what a country…
Memo To: Prime Minister Harper.
We hear you. We support you.
Will you & your government make good on your promises?
Farmers require your assistance. Get these bureauc-rats off the farmers’ backs. +
-Tories will get tough on crime “not by picking on farmers and duck hunters. We’ll do it by giving police and the legal system the tools to do their job.” +
Keep bugging MPs with letters, phone calls demanding change, says Harper.
http://www.paulding.net/bin/url.cgi/13236.5
yahoo.com
uncleshred…..As you well know, 350 chickens don’t translate into $61,250.00. It’s the quota that has value, not the livestock. Consumers should rise up? You don’t like it, don’t buy it. What consumers should rise up against is agricultural subsidies entirely.
Zuma on that I can agree with you.
But remember where the subsidies come from. The american farmers get roughly 1/2 their income from subsidies, the EU around 1/3. Canada’s subsidization is less than 10%.
Those are the people I am competing with for market share and sales and they are getting $10-20000 more than I am for the same production.
I would love for the government to get completely out of my business. But in order for my farm to survive that I need the government to exit business in other countries too.
What I want is for my government to go to bat for me and have those (trade distorting) subsidies removed. And failing that I want them to compensate me for their laziness and nearly complete and utter failure in attempts to protect Canadian industry.
barcs…..Comparing US(1/2) and EU(1/3) subsidy rates to Canadian is apples and oranges. The US and the EU consume 70-80% of what they produce domestically. Canada exports 70-80%. Apply Canadian subsidy aggregate $’s to a level of 30% of production above domestic consumption and Canadian farmers will compare quite favourably.
Left over Lie-beral thugs trying to ruin an honest man and his livelyhood. There are many political appointees and/or recipients of federal jobs that have to be culled from the bureaucracy. Left over Lie-beral’s are to be loathed and despised.
Property Tax Assessment: Another “Slaughter” perpetrated by fascist government bureauc-rats. +
More on the property tax assessment Report released by the Ontario Ombudsman yesterday…
“It’s bad enough that in one corner you have the average citizen with scant information to make his case facing an adversary in the other corner with a full bank of relevant data collected at taxpayers’ expense along with legions of property and litigation experts, but the current system goes a step further and puts the onus of evidence on the property owner,” Marin said.
“This is not a match-up, this is a slaughter,” he said. ….
A good thing, too. What a rotten can of fat, juicy tax worms Marin has opened with his report! Bad enough we get stiffed for taxes that are fairly assessed. When the tax base is warped, when you have no way of appealing wrongly assessed taxes without hitting a brick wall, you know you’ve traded good government for a high-handed autocracy that would make Marie Antoinette blush.”
UPDATE….
Sun editorial on Ombudsman’s Report
If half of what Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin says is wrong with the government agency responsible for assessing the value of all homes in Ontario is accurate, the place should be shut down and rebuilt from the ground up.
In a searing indictment of the Municipal Property Assessment Corp. yesterday, Marin basically said the provincial Crown corporation treats the public like mushrooms. That is, it keeps them in the dark and covers them with manure. + more…
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Blizzard_Christina/2006/03/29/1510108.html
via newsbeat1.com
yeah…. the people producing 30% above domestic comsumption would do alright… so long as noone produced more,…. or had a farm bigger than the average payment.
Farm policy has brought us to this place. For example the Crow rate. Designed to make it equitable for farmers across canada where a bushel of grain in BC costs teh same to move to port as in Saskatchewan.
Why wouldn’t Saskatchewanites take advantage of that. It meant no more transportation to port than anyone else paid. But if we were to grow beef,… no such subsidy applied. we don’t make as much.
So while you can say that government policy benifited the grains and oilseeds industry in Sask. You can also resonably asses that the Fed’s are at least partially responsible for the destruction of any advances in the sask livestock industry (including supply managed since most of the quota goes to Quebec and Ontario).
The point being that the government policy is as responsible for the grains overproduction in Canada compared to consumption as any producer.
Supply management systems: are they good or bad? From the point of view of consumers, we pay more for products like eggs, butter, milk, etc… than in the USA. For those farmers outside of the SM system in their product of choice, SM is a cartel of crooks. To those inside, it means they actually have a chance of making a return on their investment in a reasonable range.
Overall, according to the NFU, farmers as a group earn low single digit to negative returns on investment, compared to double digit returns for others in the “food chain” like processors and supermarkets. How well do SM farmers do on their investments?
Buffaloe Bean wrote, in part, in reply to my post:
“Phred, only someone very foolish would stand under a loader’s scoop, ever, at the best of times or in front of a moving tractor.
But “striking” with a tractor…really, striking with a tractor!
This was a heated confrontation, a blocking of the driveway so chickens could not be hauled off.
It is acknowledged things escalated, but this took two to tangle and both sides did come to their senses.”
As I understand it from news reports, Mr Hillier directed the tractor operator to drive through the position the OPP officer was standing in, after the officer had made it clear that the tractor was to move out of the way. The tractor drove into the officer, so I could have said assaulted, or ran into or collided with, etc… I chose to use non-inflammatory language. f you choose to mock that, go ahead.
However, “acknowledging that things escalated” is, in fact, very similar to the torquing of the language I am sure you lament when politicians try to smoothe over a lamentable act.Mr Hillier incited and the farmer driving the tractor committed an assault on a police officer. My question is simple: when is it OK to commit acts of violence against officers of the law, and when are they heroes? Can it be both ways?
Barcs…..”government policy is as responsible for overproduction…” Yes, but it’s their policy of subsidization that encourages overproduction. The fact is, Canada has too much productive capacity and too small of a population to sustain the overproduction of commodities that are not economically viable on the world market.
No one was a hero in this, Phred.
When situations like this escalate, one would hope that common sense is employed, *first*, by trained police, to do what they can to talk it down.
Negotiators were in short supply and we got what we got.
If they feel they were ‘assaulted’ or ‘struck’, they will lay additional charges.
Time will show what a real lawyer would do with that, and with the lacking counsel he had at the time.
Is Saskatchewan* near Moose Jaw? +
Landowners and tax federation share a bond, says Williamson
By NICK GARDINER
Staff Writer
SPRING VALLEY — The president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation had no misgivings about wading into a crowd of Ontario Landowners Tuesday night at the Spring Valley Hall.
Guest speaker John Williamson spent less than half an hour in front of a crowd of 200 people at the annual meeting of the Leeds and Grenville Landowners Association before sitting back to watch “what the people are really here for” – Randy Hillier and Shawn Carmichael.
The tale of Carmichael, whose Cardinal-area egg farm was the scene last Thursday of a raid by federal and provincial authorities, who were then confronted by a group of 40 landowners led by Hillier, was not unknown to Williamson.
He lauded the organization for its ability to generate publicity, pointing to a tableful of press clippings from across Ontario.
He’s met several times with Hillier, founder and provincial president of the landowners, and has been a guest speaker at other local meetings elsewhere.
“The values of the two organizations are probably broadly aligned,” Williamson said during an interview with The Recorder and Times.
He said the feeling in the room Tuesday is similar to what he’s experienced at some federation meetings in another rural area of Canada where self-determination is seen as a virtue.
“I look across the room and it reminds me of one of those meetings we have in *Saskatchewan.” + more
http://newsfeed.recorder.ca/cgi-bin/LiveIQue.acgi$rec=17424
You are confusing Canada with the world again Zuma… agriculture is not a local market, it is a global one (except when compartmentalized by for example supply management or the cap you yourself suggested. both affect supply to alter price.)
Joe Canuck comments 27 March/06: Comment # 2.
Talk about bureaucratic pissant overkill, eh? +
Right, Joe Canuck; pissant, bureauc-rats.
Bureauc-ratic despotism in Canada. +
Booze Inspector from Hell has ’em crying in their beer
COBOURG, Ont. – Barflies here are not in a happy-hour mood. At the beer tent, she insisted everyone going to the portable johns had to then get back in line at the tent entrance. All that beer. By the time you got through the line you had to pee again. Everyone was pissed off. (Toronto Sun) +
via primetimecrime.com
Barcs….. You are the one who is confused. That is just what I said: Agriculture is a global market. Canadian farmers can’t compete in that market. The rest of society can’t afford to support every farmer from cradle to grave. You are not indispensable. Canada needs radical change in the direction of elimination of all ag subsidies.
and maz2….I thought you said the CTF were for taxpayers? They sound like they’re advocating socialism for farmers.
Canada is built on teh concept of subsidization… and espically Saskatchewan….
Power, welfare, child care, health care, potatoes, lumbermills, bombadier, saef injection sites, telemircale, ‘Riders, Unions, ethanol plants, Air canada, etc, etc, etc… everything the governments give money to.
So tell you what. Lets agree today that the government should not fund anything that concivably should be done on ones own. Lets have everyone suck it up.
And the government can give back whatever taxes they didn’t need. (Just cutting back what I don’t think should be funded would save me 2/3 of my tax bill.)
On the flip side.. If you want help funding your causes. How bout a little leaway when I ask you to help fund mine.
barcs…. If all you want is your slice of the big subsidy pie, why do you argue against 90% of social programs, why do you vote for the small gov’t. Conservatives?
Methinks you aren’t listening to me….
The argument that I should have some of the subsidy pie is simply a counter to the argument that I should not have any support because you think what I do is unsustainable. Well I have the same opinion about 100 other things the gov does.
I will quote myself from earlier:
“I even participated in a C-CARIN government industry conference on how to manage subsidies for sectors, I told them I didn’t want to create a system wher noone can fail… but subsidies paid elsewhere in the world mean I need a little help to compete too.”
and more importantly.
“What I want is for my government to go to bat for me and have those (trade distorting) subsidies removed. And failing that I want them to compensate me for their laziness and nearly complete and utter failure in attempts to protect Canadian industry.”
I DONT WANT SUBSIDIES,… I WANT THEM REMOVED, My farm is far more efficient than the US or EU farms, and I would do well if they faced the same market conditions. It would not be me that would lose the farm (first anyway). Under the reduciton of US and EU farm production supply would decrease. Canada produces peanuts compared to the world Wheat crop.
Barcs said: So tell you what. Lets agree today that the government should not fund anything that conceivable should be done on ones own. Lets have everyone suck it up.
His logic is correct. However, I would come to a different conclusion.
I was very involved with the Reform Party when it got started 20 rears ago. Preston repeatedly said lets get rid of ALL subsidies. The Corporate welfare bums included. That message went over very well out in the West, but for whatever reasons Ontario and East thought that was scary.
So now we continue on with the policy of plundering the other guy to compensate for him plundering me. I think that is a very inefficient way to run an economy. We ALL suffer. There are NO winners, just losers.