Last evening, CTV’s Jill Macashon did a segment (web version) on the Canadian Wheat Board debate that had all the depth of a sixth grade book report. Watch it if you like. About all you’ll “learn” is that Alberta wants the monopoly gone, while Saskatchewan and Manitoba farmers function as a Borg collective.
But here’s a neat tidbit a reader sent along a few days ago, contained in a this 2005 federal court document: Renova Holdings Ltd. et al. v. The Canadian Wheat
The plaintiffs argued “that the Board issued direct export licences for wheat to producers outside of the designated area and that the revenue from the direct export sales by those producers did not become a part of the pooled revenue from sales held for all who farmed in the designated area and provided wheat for the Board to sell. However, and this is the crux of the cause of action, the Board incurred expenses in granted the direct export licences which it then, wrongfully in the view of the Plaintiffs, deducted from the pooled sales proceeds account held for all producers of wheat in the designated area.”
In the CWB statement of defence:
[3] The Defendants seek to strike out the Statement of Claim on the basis that the Board is accountable only to Parliament and that neither the Board nor the Crown owe any duty to or are accountable to the Plaintiffs as producers of wheat.
Stephane Dion has announced that if elected, he will “reinstate” the Canadian Wheat Board should the Conservatives dismantle its monopoly as promised.
Had a very short discussion with a 65 year old farmer friend just this morning. Imagine that!
He was pro Wheat Board. He figured Cargill was just waiting to go one on one with producers. The ever popular divide and conquer tactic.
He didn’t feel the free market would pay as well as some hoped. Somehow large southern Alberta producers would do well, but didn’t elaborate as to how. It was not a very in depth discussion mainly cause I have no background knowledge of CWB duties and activities.
Two sides to every issue I guess.
I heard the Senators arguing with the Accountability act for making the WB exempt from the Act. The Senator was saying that the WB was NOT accountable to parliament because it was an independent arms length outfit. This statement refutes that statement. Hummm??? Why are all the Liberano$ in both Houses of parliament terrified (hysterical!!) that these secret accounts might be cracked open for all to see? the bouncing bunny Easter is going sideways in QP. Don’t they know that everyone sees their panic and wonders why they are so emotional about ‘protecting’ farmers in the Wild West (which they despise).
‘Me thinks that (they) doth protest too much’
Canadian Wheat Board – Producer Payment Options
Cargill AgHorizons, as a representative of the Canadian Wheat Board, brings you a variety of Producer Payment Options to help you make the right pricing decision for your Canadian Wheat Board grain. Consider one of the Producer Payment Options to help you manage risk, provide control over cash flow and potentially increase your net return.
Cargill is already a part of the CWB so that farmers argument is a moot point!
http://www.cargillaghorizons.ca/grain/payment_options.shtm
Creating a marketing plan is the first step in the process, and Cargill AgHorizons Farm Marketing Representatives are available to assist you in determining the best combination of Producer Payment Options for your operations. For more information on Producer Payment Options, go to the Canadian Wheat Board website at http://www.cwb.ca/en/contracts/index.jsp.
Wasn’t the head of CWB on Newmans show this week complaing about parliament giving directions to the board?
Great post Kate.Just threw the whole political interference bull out the window for the Lib’s.
Not too early to name it…let’s see:
Boondoggle…taken
Scam…taken
Cover up …well used
How about Wheat Board Shaft?
“Renova v. CWB”, is not about CWB marketing in the west. Its about the separate Part IV national licencing that the CWB does for the federal government as required by the Act. It was put into the Act in 1947, and access to information internal documents describe it as a tariff or export/import tax with the money to go to the government and the costs to be paid by government.
Part IV is the same, but the CWB now claims it mandates and describes the buy-back in the west, and they make prairie farmers pay the Part IV costs.
Farmers in the East are granted licences for free, while the farmers in the west, who can’t get the licences, must pay the costs.
Not being a wheat farmer or a farmer of any kind, this whole wheat board smacks of nothing but political interference designed to give a monopoly to eastern wheat growers. Perhaps it is more complicated than that, but to this outside observer……give breaks to farmers from eastern Canada at the expense of farmers from western Canada. Sounds so very Liberal.
It’s obviously a big deal for the Eastern farmers. Why else would the likes of Wayne Easter be up in the House yelling his guts out on the subject?
Steffawn Deeyawn doesn’t know his ass from page four on the subject either.
The Liberals don’t consult, they cater to their Eastern base and to hell with the West.
“………that neither the Board nor the Crown owe any duty to or are accountable to the Plaintiffs as producers of wheat.”
And that’s exactly what’s wrong with the whole system. Consider, if you will, if there are any producers under any circumstances, who would agree to trust the marketing of their products to an organization which is wholly unaccountable to them. If anyone were to propose this type of arrangement in private business, they would be laughed out of the place. It’s entirely ludicrous.
And if the CWB does consider themselves not accountable to producers, what type of internal behaviour might this have given rise to? We can only know that if we could have the CWB audited.
Love it…CWB..commie Canada..the sheeple shall reign.
What Dion has done is send a message to Quebec as well Ontario.
By disparaging the West & coming on like a bull in rut. He has essentially said. The West is of no matter anymore. Its back to Quebec being the big cheese. Ontario feels safe knowing its politics as usual without wild eyed Albertans. With presents looted from the only real producing Province to ease the pressure on the East by theft of Western money & resources. Including this indentured servitude known as the CWB. Which of course they would never allow happen to real Canadians out East.
Very shrewd plan of conquest. Give hope to Ontario there Empire is whole. While bringing back those issues they understand. Like appeasing Quebec with Albertan money. With there “Natural born governing party” of loons& crooks.
This was a call for yesterday’s Canada. It may work.
With “Nice guy Ed now in power in Alberta. Dion believes there will be no fears of an Albertan defection. With the win of the Democrats down South, they feel this will boost there chances in the East. Hence the DEAN scream at the convention.
This was what was implied with cheers. The Libs believe they will be back in power soon. Who can say they will not, with these new factors? Its why all the old guard where there like sharks in the front row with him. The MSM was beside themselves with joy. Particularly at Honest Ed’s Election. The Star was dizzy with elation of this.
Alberta just may have voted its own demise. If the left is that happy, I would worry.
Dion signaled his intention to loot Alberta with the rest of the West by his tough talk. This make hearts glow in Ontario & Quebec. Qubecer’s being cagey voters will see there meal ticket secure under Dion.
This is just speculation, which I hope is wrong. I fear not. To my fellow Albertans, you where played bubba.
Just my opinion
Dion has no idea about anything to do with the west, he thinks he will get rural votes in Ontario, and has basically written Alberta off. He obviously thinks we will just bow down and continue to take it. Well we are different, he will find this out. The east may have a bigger voter base, but the west has the power. Manufacturing is tanking in Ont. and Que., it’s the west keeping this country alive for now.
30% of Albertans voted for Morton. That support will increase if the liberals try another NEP brainchild like a carbon tax, etc. Alberta farmers want the CWB gone as a monopoly. Drive around the fields this summer and see how many that used to grow wheat and barley and now into non WB crops. What if Alberta farmers decided not to seed any wheat this year. Could happen. All I predict is if Dion ever becomes PM, and tries to take what is Albertas, he will find out that when we talk separation, we mean it. We will not blackmail canada like quebec has for years, taking our money and resourses. It is Ont and Que that better wake up. Dion and liberals are not their saviour. We need an audit of the CWB books, the sooner the better. Liberals are afraid of that as it will be worse than adscam ever was. Maybe farmers should go after the full pymt of wheat that was sold to Britain to finance the war, which they turned around and sold at world prices. If natives,can go after treaty money etc for things signed over 100 years ago, head tax can be paid back, Arar can blackmail us for millions, why not pay the farmers for all that wheat sold 60 years ago. I still think the next federal election will be the last in the Canada we now have. Vote que out of canada.
Opponents of the Canadian Wheat Board Meet to Strategize With Chuck Strahl
http://www.danheller.com/images/UnitedStates/Nevada/LasVegas/Misc/ferengi-big.jpg
In any commodity business, excepting grain growers in the West, you can sell your product to an aggregator of your choice. Or you can sell it on your own. The CWB situation is plainly inconsistent with democracy.
Beaker has picked a really bad hill to die on. My guess right now is that he isn’t planning some sort of Machivellian “bash the west” strategy. He really is that clueless.
Beaker’s got a big shock coming.
The 65 year old farmer in the above post is typical of many of that age. They grew up in an era of big government socialism and loath anything that would reform some of the institutions of that era like the CWB. Being from a rural area, I know many people like this; they are basically closet socialists.
Like people his age, they often don’t farm very much land, and are often renters as opposed to full-time farmers. Nonetheless, they get a vote in the CWB that is completely out of proportion to what they contribute to the market. Western Canadian agriculture cannot continue to be held hostage to these leftist, parochial interests if it expects to grow and prosper.
The CWB election results were announced today. Unfortunately, pro-choice candidate Dwayne Anderson lost. However, a candidate who appears to be pro-choice (it’s somewhat unclear from his biography) unseated single-desk dinosaur Art Macklin. So the balance of power essentially remains unchanged.
Farmers will continue to be threatened with jail if they dare to cross the border with a harmless load of wheat. The years of shame continue unabated.
“CTV’s Jill Macashon did a segment (web version) on the Canadian Wheat Board debate that had all the depth of a sixth grade book report.”
Kate:
You never know with journalists whether they do things that way because they’re just not that bright or because they think we’re not that bright.
Many years ago, while on a military course, a Canadian Forces public affairs officer with a lot of media experience gave me some great advice about reporters:
Remember you’re just another news assignment; the guy who’s interviewing you for the local paper this morning probably has to cover a dog show this afternoon.
P.S. “maryT’s” tirades are becoming increasingly wearifying in my view.
She carps away about “dual citizens” like M. Dion but then goes off on a full-scale Albertan separatist rant.
Having (presumably) only Canadian citizenship, doesn’t seem to have made “maryT” any more patriotic or loyal about our country.
They screw up dog show reporting, too.
I wish you prairie farmers would get a handle on that CWB. You keep selling your grain so cheap to Rogers Flour that we can’t compete with you and we only live a mile from the mill.
Dear JJM 4:30
I am not a separtist Albertan nor is the ill-advised dual citizenship hole Dion has dug himself into my problem.
However I will assert that Dion displays an ignorance of western Canada that exceeds any federal leader I have seen in my lifetime. Including Trudeau, Layton, and Duceppe. I hope it’s just “early returns”.
If Dion, as he has pledged to, comes riding out of the east on his horse next year planning to impose wellhead carbon taxes and assert CWB monopolies there will be big trouble. And it won’t matter whether the motivation is ignorance or something worse.
And I suspect we would agree that the last thing we need in Canada is a second national unity problem.
[3] The Defendants seek to strike out the Statement of Claim on the basis that the Board is accountable only to Parliament and that neither the Board nor the Crown owe any duty to or are accountable to the Plaintiffs as producers of wheat.
Shut the f**K up and get back on the combine.
Nice.
Syncro
JJM: I am crying crocadile tears, you don’t like me. FYI, I am eligible for citizenship in 2 other countries should I wish to apply. That wonderful USA is one of them, and my parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents, on both sides, were US citizens. They come to Canada in 1908, and for some reason never took out cdn citizenship. That is the reason their guns were confiscated during WW1, not cdns. Oh, didn’t you know that there has been a law on the books for years re confiscation of guns. That is why Rock said he would never impose it, cause its already there and been used. But, I do have a cdn passport, does that count.
JJM and another thing, I am ALBERTAN first and cdn second. Most Albertans are like me. Didn’t use to be that way, but after Trudeau and sucking up to Quebec that changed. Dion needs to gain at least 51 seats, plus hold all he has. He will need the west and Alberta to get them. If he forms a government with just Ont and Que, there will be no Canada other than a land mass on a map.
Dealing with the CWB should be optional, no matter how many farmers support the current monopoly over western producers.
It’s like people voting over whether to allow me the right to speak. Sorry, but my freedoms are not subject to a vote.
The CWB claiming they are not accountable to farmers is nothing new. They have successfully used it several times in court in the past. But in this case it didn’t work, and the CWB lost. The difference is that when the CWB sells grain, it is their grain and the Act says they can sell it for whatever they want, and that’s how the CWB beat farmers in court in the past.
But once money has been put in the pooling accounts, the Act is very specific about how it is handled and paying national licencing costs from the western pool accounts is not allowed.
There’s millions at stake here and it is shameful that our ideological directors have put the interests of self-seving Winnipeg bureaucrats over the interests of prairie farmers. The CWB has appealed and this case is presently under Judicial Review in the Federal Court.
Steffawn Deeyawn will have to make himself clear, and in English, that’s next to impossible.
It’s too bad, after all these years in politics he hasn’t a better grasp of the English language. It also begs the question, how much does he know about the Country beyond Quebec and Ontario?
Of course we have learned it only matters if English speakers can’t master the French.
Any governemnt that has the power to jail its farmers (which it did a few years ago) in the west for selling their own produce but allow eastern farmers free choice to sell their product, is not fit to govern.
We already have the communist system of health care and the CWB wheat and barley market monopoly in the west is just another example of the communist mentality of the BLOC – heads, ND’s and Libs.
Why is the CWB exempt from access to information?
The amount of dirty laundry hidden in the CWF will make adscam look like chump change.
End the liberano/communist control of our country!!!!
JM, the Lie-beral’s exempted the CWB from Access to Information requests, as well as barring the Auditor General from going over the books. What have they been hiding?
”Dealing with the CWB should be optional, ”
Subsidizing agriculture should be optional, too.
”With presents looted from the only real producing Province…. Revnant Dream .
What do Albertans do, other than occupying real estate overflowing with petro-billions, that other Canadians do not? What do YOU do, Revnant idiot, that other Canadians do not? This contemptuous, asinine, self-righteous sentiment, so pervasive on this site is absolutely disgusting. The sooner Steve and his Alberta yahoos are turfed from power, the better.
Maryjane, that won’t be happening anytime soon. Just you wait until the Auditor General gets to go over the books of Canada Post, the CWB, Via Rail, etc.
Forgot the foundations BR.
maryjane, don’t talk too loudly, your in for the unearthing of another big fiasco, compliments of your beloved Liberals.
Listening to the likes of Wayne Easter yelling his guts out on the issue tells us there’s something he hopes to cover up.
maryjane,
Other than lower taxes, get out of the way of the people and let them run their own affairs?
How come the Sask economy is in such great state if it has nothing to do with oil? Sask has huge amounts but their government interferes and stops development.
Lefties with no grasp on reality.
enough
So, if I understand this properly, the CWB is utterly unaccountable to those who must sell them their produce. How truly GOD-like, this CWB! I love Socialism! Keeps the peons in their place! The unwashed, the uneducated, the mean-spirited, uppity workers. Yep! Socialism is such a positive thing. Unless you actually work for your daily bread!
The people bad mouthing Alberta reminds me of the spoiled brats that have no respect for their parents that supply them with all the money they want with no gratitude.Alberta keeps Canada together with transfer payments.Maybe its time to stop the money and let the rest of Canada grow up.
For the uninformed,the CWB does NOT buy our grain.They only sell it for us,and charge a fee for doing it.We dont know,and cant find out what the fee is.What we do know is that they sold wheat to Britain at under world price,the Soviets and when they bought,it was called the Great Grain Robbery,and Iraq at the same time as the AWB. A few years ago the Libs passed legislation to exempt any employee of the CWB from prosecution for any dealings that they may have done on behalf of the CWB.
”The people bad mouthing Alberta…..”
spike 1
Ya got it backwards, spike. It’s Alberta yahoos and their ideological soulmates who are badmouthing everyone else. What do YOU do, BTW?
Maryjane Where are you, and what DO YOU DO?? other than contribute to global warming with your hot air and the methane from the BS that flows so lieberaly from you head.
Just to put the economic aspect of the grain trade versus other Canadian trade with the US, the oil company Encana recently announced that they would be shipping 400,000 bbls/day of oil for refining in the US. At $50/bbl, that is $20 million per day crossing the border and nobody in Canada is getting excited. And Ontario essentially had free trade, worth billions of dollars, with the US since the 1965 Autopact.
Contrast that to the jailing of farmers for taking $20 worth of grain across the border. The pathetic CWB, who is no friend of the grain farmer, has been used to make a massive transfer of wealth from Western Canada’s grain farmers to their Liberal friends and supporters in central Canada over the last 50 years. That is why the Easter bunny and friends are screaming blue murder.
If free trade is good enough for eastern Canada, then a continental barley and wheat market is good enough for the West, one way or another.
Western Canada, a nation withOUT Ontario and Quebec.
What a couple of boat anchors they have been to Western Canada.
Bill D. Cat, glad to see you’ve been attention, that NINE BILLION DOLLARS is just being begged to be audited.
Spike, You say “the CWB does NOT buy our grain. They only sell it for us….” Seems like you have been listening to the CWB. Its important for those of us opposed to the monopoly to know when they are telling the truth and when they are not. This one is absolute propaganda garbage, it is a legal sale to the CWB.
Section 32. (1) of the CWB Act states: “The Corporation shall undertake the marketing of wheat produced in the designated area in interprovincial and export trade and for that purpose shall
(a) buy all wheat produced in the designated area and offered by a producer for sale and delivery to the Corporation….”
This is also supported by court cases.
”Maryjane Where are you, and what DO YOU DO??
Rob C”
I am in SK and I work hard for what I have, like the vast majority of my fellow citizens from sea to sea to shining bloody sea. I’m not the one here saying my efforts and my region are the be all and end all of what is productive and worthwhile in this world. YOU and your incessantly whining right-wing fellow travelers are. What do YOU do???
“I wish you prairie farmers would get a handle on that CWB. You keep selling your grain so cheap to Rogers Flour that we can’t compete with you and we only live a mile from the mill.”
Nothin’ like a little salt…
CWB is accountable to no one, farmer, AG or Parliment. This is one thing the Conservatives MUST fix before calling an election. Could it become a vote of confidence?
maryjane;I grow wheat in the CWB designated area.I was also a seed grower in that same area so that I could sell my wheat to other farmers as seed and not have to let the CWB sell it for me.John;if thats what has been in court,then you have had a very poor lawyer.The CWB never takes possession of our wheat because if they did then the demurage charges from strikes or labor stoppages would be leveled against the CWB and not taken out of the pool account.When we sell canola to elevator companies and there is a work stoppage,the elevator companies have to absorb the costs and not the farmer as the farmer has sold his canola.
I work in that dirty old oil buseness. You know the one that allowes “ABERTA” to support the rest of Canada with equalization money. Oh by the way, which sea is the bloody one ?? Now you run along i am done talking to you now.
Maryjane never did say what she does but, from her blather, my diagnosis is that she’s an urban NDP snivel servant who knows absolutely nothing about either farming or the oil industry.
When I was a lad, maryjane was what we called cannabis. Any connection?
Maryjane, tell me one instance of an Albertan spitting in the face of a Quebecer visiting or working in Alberta, just because they come from Que. like my granddaughter was in that wonderful province of Quebec, just because she was from small town Alberta. They have turned a 19yr old girl against quebec and liberals for life. Thanks to Monte Solbergs office she in now giving away dozens of Cdn flag pins when she gets insulted. She is being devious, pinning them on restaurant bills and other places where they have to at least touch them if they want their money. One can pin one on an idiot when they are not looking. All tho she says the province is beautiful, most of the people she has met are ignorant. Most of them have never heard of any place but que and are very ignorant of the rest of canada. She was in Montreal during the convention and heard some strange stories from delegates staying at the hostel she and her group were in. Some of them are so stupid they are unaware that Alberta and Ont support them. They actually think Que is self supporting.