From Agri-post, December 29,2006
Bill Toews says it was not an easy decision but he stands with his choice.
Toews is one of the Directors of the Canadian Wheat Board that voted in favour of giving employees of the CWB a $1000 bonus this Christmas.
He says that he knew it might not be a popular decision but he thinks it will turn out to be a good business decision.
“The employees of the Board were under a great deal of stress,” he says. “this was intended to help with that and to keep the employees with the Board. It is no secret some employees are looking elsewhere with the uncertainty that has surrounded the future of the Canadian Wheat Board.”
Toews says that the cost of the bonus amounts to “about 4 or 4 1\2 cups of coffee per farmer and that is not a great deal.”
He anticipates questioning from farmers as to why they did not receive cheques to alleviate their stress in the past two crop years.
“I see the books of the Board, and the employees are doing a good job, and they were ahead of target for sales this year. The farmers are getting their bonus in the price they receive for their grain they don’t get individual cheques but they get their returns.”
Toews also knows he is going to face tough questions from farmers about the announcement only a couple of days after the final returns were announced for the previous crop year, and were lower then some expected.
“The bonuses will come out of the 2006-7 crop year,and have no effect on the final payments that were announced recently,” he says.
Via Rolf Penner, who writes;
The first thing I thought reading it was this is the ‘beer and popcorn’ defence with a ‘double-mocha latte twist, Bill Toews meets Scott Reid.
The second was what ‘targets’ is Toews referring too? All summer farmers across the prairies have been tracking prices .50 cents to a buck a bushel higher across the border than what the board offered and now are seeing the price of feed wheat getting close to that of high quality milling wheat. Add into the mix the fact that we are at 25 year lows in global wheat stocks and this so-called monopoly still can’t get us premiums, its the farmers who have a legitimate right to be stressed at another $500,000.00 of their money being used for political theatrics.
Somehow, I don’t think telling them to do without their morning cup of coffee for a week will do much for farmers stress levels. Just a hunch.
.
And lets not forget what a bang up job the boys and girls at the board are doing with premium malting barley. All the guys I know who grew it last year are getting more selling it for feed these days.
The arrogance and gall of these monopolists is just unbelievable.
Yeah, like we are to believe it is hard to play Santa with someone elses money. Now if the $1000 was part of the severence package…
This guy is simply your average poltician, hes got no idea what it takes to make the money, not a clue what pain he is causing when he mismanages the money but is first in line for the bonus or 25%-120% pay increase these clucks like to give themselves.
Nobody ever gave me a bonus for just showing up to work and shuffling paper around. I bet these are key
employees.
How to keep you fifedom intact this guy should write a book to bureaucrats everywhere.
I better stop before more colorful words begin to
appear.
If the” targets” are volume only that sure is a shame. Just blow it out at fire sale prices who cares, no is accountable,think back to last years pool.
When I can sell feed wheat for close to what they are getting for a “premium” product for human consumption how do they deserve a bonus?
I like the severence package idea Texas Canuck.
You obviously know nothing of the wheat board or it’s purpose.
“Hello there, we’re from the government and we are here to help you”
English translation “we want you money and your liberty so we can have an easy life of low stress work followed by fat pensions”
This Liberal organisation is as corrupt and arrogant as their former government mentors when, with record surplusses, the Liberals took Canadian taxpayer money and gave it to their Quebec ad friends, ultimately to retain their grip on power.
Bring in the hounds to hunt down all the Liberal rats and feed on them.
ok4ua,They claim to bring higher returns for designated area producers vs multable sellers, that is mentioned all the time, where are the higher returns? I have heard all the lefty fear mongering for years about the big bad for profit multinationals and how the sky will fall if the board is gone give me a break! Was not the original purpose to obtain cheap wheat for England after the war? It has served it’s purpose lets have the freedom to market our grain as we see fit.
It seems to work fine with canola,for example.
Hush money
“The employees of the Board were under a great deal of stress”
I think our boys in Kandahar are under quite a bit more stress. Will the CWB employees be donating their bonuses to our Canadian Forces personnel and their families?
This sounds like a joke… must be Canada…
SEVERENCE PAY!!! Anything else is a theft.
…$1000 bonus for short changing farmers eh?
Must be nice.
Liberals are entitled to their entitlements. Hugo Chavez for Liberal leader and Pimping Minister of Canada!
I still think that Ontario and Quebec farmers should be FORCED to be members of the CWB. In two weeks the CWB WOULD NOT EXIST. They couldn’t survive under the Communistic system that the LIEberals want to keep. As long as Ontario can have freedoms that the Western farmers are denied, they do not care. They can sell their products without fear of being arrested and thrown in jail. I wonder how they would feel to have their grain confiscated by the CWB and told when and how it will be sold?
This is just another discrimination against the West that the LIEberals want to keep. Dion treats the CWB as he did the Environment when he was Environment Minister, just a stepping stone. He did nothing to cut pollution and now blames the Conservatives for their failure.
I think the CWB should give all the farmers that are SLAVES to them a $1,900.00 bonus just so they can have a little stress relief also.
Toews says that the cost of the bonus amounts to “about 4 or 4 1\2 cups of coffee per farmer and that is not a great deal.”
Personally, I’m beginning to resent the condescension of those who feel they must break everything down to “cups of coffee”, “football fields”, etc. How stupid do they think the great unwashed are?
What is the cost per farmer, $3, $5? Gee, that’s not much, if there are only 105 farmers! Duh!
Spend our money, then spit in our faces afterward, we’re used to it.
“As long as Ontario can have freedoms that the Western farmers are denied, they do not care. They can sell their products without fear of being arrested and thrown in jail.”
Ontario: Fascist bureauc-rats in action:
Carmichael to get his day in court March 1, 2007 – December, 2006 …
On March 23, the Ontario Landowners Association interrupted a raid on Carmichael’s farm conducted jointly by the CFIA and the Egg Farmers of Ontario …
http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=8041&ShowSection=News
I see the following numbers: $500,000 in total bonuses. $1,000 per employee. 4 to 4.5 cups of coffee per farmer. From this I deduce that there are perhaps 100,000 farmers affected by the CWB, and that there are 500 employees of the CWB. What do these 500 employees do? Or what are they supposed to do?
CWB would be run differently if Directors were farmer-appointed or if it were a co-op.
Maybe Mr. Toews would personally give the employes of the CWB $1000 each out of his own renumeration as director.I personally dont wish to give anyone a bonus for selling my grain below world price.Talking about world price,would the doctors,lawyers etc be satisfied with world price?I dont think so.
“Toews also knows he is going to face tough questions from farmers”
No kidding. How about this one. How does giving the employees $1000 with no conditions keep them from looking elsewhere? No value in this “bonus”.
Jeez Toews, if you want to give people money for Christmas, use your own.
“Toews also knows he is going to face tough questions from farmers”
No kidding. How about this one. How does giving the employees $1000 with no conditions keep them from looking elsewhere? No value in this “bonus”.
Jeez Toews, if you want to give people money for Christmas, use your own.
”Somehow, I don’t think telling them to do without their morning cup of coffee for a week will do much for farmers stress levels. Just a hunch.”
Each and every day, every SK man, woman and child contributes the cost of one and a half cups of coffee to alleviate the stress of SK farmers. Maybe the price of 4 1/2 cups going the other way will give a small indication of how it feels.
This is a capitalist country. Capitalism {which is all about freedom] works. Our health system is communistic i.e. centrql planning and NO COMPETITION ALLOWED.
Is this grain marketing setup, no competition allowed, also communistic?
Is he an elected or appoineted director. If elected, will he be re-elected, and what do the farmers who voted for him think.
Neil, some say more so. At least with health care you can go somewhere else and spend your own money to get well again. You try taking your wheat across the line you wind up in solitary confinement, sleeping on a concrete floor, without a bed, or any dinner. Just ask James Chatney.
Farmers can just be so gosh darned kind and neighborly with people they don’t agree with, can’t they.
So what are we talking about here? A couple of cups of coffee or relieving some farmer stresses? If we are talking about a couple of cups of coffee, then fine, its no big deal. If we are talking about relieving some farmer stress then will taking a couple of cups of coffee away from them actually relieve that stress? Come on! Lets get to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is not the employees of the Board. If we focus on that bonus we really dilute the merits of the overall argument of giving the farmers a choice in this greater matter.
Lets move on with this whole bonus issue and continue to concentrate on the great issue here. Pettiness will not advance the cause of choice.
sounds rather liberano of you bob
Considering the desperation in all the gliberano responses to this issue, they are all HIDING SOMETHING, (and very soon, we will find out what that is- and WHO are RESPONSIBLE for it!)
Maryjane, now you’re confusing me.
If the wheat is grown by farmers, and…
The farmers are subsidized by the taxpayer, and…
The farmers just paid for a $1000 bonus for every CWB employee …
Shouldn’t you be as outraged about subsidizing the employees who sell the wheat, as you are the farmers who grow it?
VF called the payments “hush money,” which is very astute of him. her. Let’s hope the auditor-gen gets her nose in there as soon as possible.
But the $1,000 “bonus” is only a downpayment on all the cash the CWB employees will extract from farmers and Canadian taxpayers if the Tories succeed in killing the board. The people ensconced in these psuedo-federal agency jobs are dug in like deer ticks. They never, ever, EVER go away without vast compensation and lavish severence payments.
If farmers think they’ve been hosed by these parasites so far, just wait ’til sullen CWB staff start getting even for having their jobs-for-life taken away from them.
Kate…Maryjane has his/her handle for a reason…
😉
Toews Says:
“I see the books of the Board, and the employees are doing a good job, and they were ahead of target for sales this year. The farmers are getting their bonus in the price they receive for their grain they don’t get individual cheques but they get their returns.”
Toews also knows he is going to face tough questions from farmers about the announcement only a couple of days after the final returns were announced for the previous crop year, and were lower then some expected.
“The bonuses will come out of the 2006-7 crop year,and have no effect on the final payments that were announced recently,” he says.
Syncro Sez: (translation)
I (Mr. Toews) unlike the rest of you, am privy to the financial accounts of the CWB. Nothing to see here, move along…move along. The farmers are getting their bonuses, of course said bonuses are not financial rather they are “intrinsic” and therefore of much greater “value”.
I know you “producers” are likely to do a great deal of pissing and moaning. That said…the last cheque you recieved was the last cheque.
We will not be demanding payback on your last cheque to pay for CWB employee bonuses as we pissed the money away in advance. Be thankfull.
Syncro
*SOURCE* The Beurocracy/Bullshit Dictionary.
A different Bob
Seems to me the issue is how wheat and barley farmers have no control over their product or their money. This incident shows that in spades.
A half a million bucks of farmers money being spent to generate a couple of headlines to try and make the Harper government look bad is more than symbolic, it is indicative of the disdain the people in charge have for the folks they claim to be protecting from those big bad multinationals.
It is not a petty issue when the overlords of the board take crumbs from struggling farmers and hand them over to fat cat bureaucrats who on average probably make anywhere from 60-100,000 dollars a year.
The outrage is more than justified.
I thought the maximum for a company was $1000 for a political contribution. Does this mean the libs have to refund $499,999?
”Shouldn’t you be as outraged about subsidizing the employees who sell the wheat, as you are the farmers who grow it?”
Shouldn’t YOU be as outraged about subsidizing the farmers who grow the wheat, as you are the employees who sell it?
MJ
Holy shit that was clever. Where do you get your stuff?
Syncro
An intellectual giant, she be.
Why is it that no one criticizes SWP’s bonus of over $500,000 to one man their CEO, where do farmers think that money came from? And what exactly has he done for farmers???
Brent….
I can choose not to deal with the SWP if I don’t agree with their business practises and even short sell their stock if they do soemthing really stupid. I however am forced by law to sell my milling wheat and malt barley to the CWB no matter what! If you can’t see the difference then git yer head out of your a$$ and see how the real world works!
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what an Eastern farmer made selling wheat in 2006 compared to a Western farmer compared to an American farmer?
I know it is a bit simplistic but it might be interesting.
ian that is a question that the CWB surely doesnt want answered.
Ian, one of the problems is that we won’t know for sure what our guys in the west got for their ’06 crop till Jan.’08 when they get their final payment.
Here is an interesting fact to chew on. In Ontario acres grown of wheat keeps increasing, this year was an all time record. In the west wheat acres keep going down. What does that tell you? That the guys in the east have a much easier time making money on it than the guys in the west.
It makes sense, especially this year when there are low global supplies and big demand. Farmers in the east can hold out till they get the price they want, in the west they have one buyer the CWB and they have to ‘give’ not sell the grain to them.
What scares the pants off the monopolists is having to compete for the grain, they are so used to getting it for nothing and selling it at firesale prices they don’t know how to do it any other way.