(Bumped – scroll down for newer entries)
Ugh.
You, the Saskatchewan taxpayer, had a dog in this fight. Despite the fact that the majority of Saskatchewan barley producers voted in favour of marketing choice, Calvert & Co saw fit to shovel your money into a third party court challenge.
In the comments, Larry Weber has a good question: “Now we get to see if this “New Government” and the CWB will throw farmers in jail for honoring their sales contracts tomorrow.”
Or maybe they should just shut down the CN rail line.
More discussion at Agriville.
For those of the “premium price persuasion”, local radio this morning had a brief response from a barley grower. The decision cost him $40,000.00. He had a contract with a malting company at $4 a bushel. The decision forces him to sell to the CWB for more than a dollar lower.
Search SDA for previous entries.
The champagne bottles have been uncorked at the CWB, Welcome back comrades.
Warwick’s got the right idea. Harper should have two bills ready to go in the fall: one to strip barley from the CWB’s jurisdiction, one to add Ontario & Quebec to the CWB’s jurisdiction, and put them both up to votes. Declare that neither are confidence motions and that Conservatives are free to vote their conscience. Watch the Liberals and NDP spin themselves into hypocritical oblivion claiming (from their farmer-less, metropolitan seats!) that the CWB is good for western farmers but bad for eastern farmers.
Anyone notice that around when the wheat board was created 1935 that the “rural” population out west started to drop. I guess taking the 1$ per farmer per bushel hurts.
I’m no farmer, and never spent significant time out west.
However, when it comes to the CWB, I thought one of the reasons it was set up was to ensure that farmers could get some security.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that when market prices are high (like now), the farmers would receive less than market value for their product. However, when market prices are low, farmers would receive a stable and fair price for their product, likely over and above what market value actually is at that time.
Maybe it’s just me, but I was under the impression thats what it was supposed to do.
For a bunch of people who decry government hand-outs and welfare, I would assume y’all would be supportive of a system that allows farmers to pay themselves with their own money.
Throbbin,
You don’t understand economics. When farmers sell their product in an open market, the price they get IS the market value. You only get more or (in the more usual case,) less than the market value when you aren’t allowed to sell IN the market by a socialist monopoly.
Oh what’s this? In the wake of the ruling barley prices are falling. Nice for the buyers to know that they don’t have to pay competitive prices now.
http://www.wce.ca/index.aspx
Oh, and the system doesn’t let the farmers pay themselves with their own money. That is what the market does.
A socialist system lets government workers pay themselves with farmer’s money.
The reason they lose over time is that the fat mandarins don’t have an incentive to produce the maximum benefit for the farmers but the maximum benefit (in both pay and in jobs) for themselves.
You also have a drag from the inefficiencies of a government monopoly’s operating costs which will always outweight any fictitious “pricing power” that comes from a “single desk” which is a concept that doesn’t work on the sell side when their are more than a single desk (i.e. other countries and provinces not under the monopoly.)
This scheme was a make-work project for government and a pretend “collective farm” concept for the socialist left.
Gee, imagine that, who would have thought that so many would be so upset that a government overstepping its’ authority should be pulled up short by a court of all things…. the absolute horror of it all ‘eh?
CWB claims that it speaks for farmers and their best interests. Yet, when farmers clearly voted for a change the CWB uses the courts to prevent it. I guess the CWB must be wiser and are only protecting farmers from themselves. Doesn’t that sound eerily like the “beer and popcorn” Liberals mentality?
If I were the CWB and supporters, I would hardly call it a victory to circumvent the majority of your clients wishes.
“This scheme was a make-work project for government and a pretend “collective farm” concept for the socialist left.”
The scheme was divised by the Conservative gov’t led by R.B. Bennett. They introducing legislation to create the Canadian Wheat Board. Prior to that, the gov’ts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta had wheat pools. They were voluntary but most farmers used them. During the depression Farmers screamed for the Federal gov’t to intervene. The economic situation of the 1930s resulted in financial disaster for the Wheat Pools. They overestimating the price of wheat for 1929 (the year of the stock market crash), the Pools were forced to take out major loans from the banks to pay farmers. Wheat prices continued falling throughout the 1930s and the Pools were unable to meet the loan payments. The Prairie provincial governments guaranteed bank loans to the Wheat Pools, and then turned to the federal government for assistance.
Hence the Wheat board was born. BTW, the Farmers supported the Wheat board because it came them financial stability instead of bankruptcy. Even prior to the voluntary Pools the railways, grain companies, etc. took advantage of them.
Leslie said: “BTW, the Farmers supported the Wheat board because it came them financial stability instead of bankruptcy.”
And now many farmers want *not* to have to sell through the board.
So what is the next step?
Times have changed and prices are good. You change it by changing the law. Parliament makes laws.
What I simply don’t get is why does not the federal government simply shut down CWB and fire its staff?
Then they can bitch and sue for whatever they want, w/o actually causing any harm and wasting taxpayer’s and farmers’ money.
Just get the keys to the building, lock the doors, turn off the utilities – end of story. That’s all, folks!
No, they have to listen to the garbage the CWB leaders have to say from their cozy offices. Why oh why?
“What I simply don’t get is why does not the federal government simply shut down CWB and fire its staff?”
The Wheat board is not a Crown Corporation. Most of it’s Directors ( the majority ) are elected by the Farmers. The Gov’t can’t fire the Farmers elected representatives.
Leslie said: “Times have changed and prices are good. You change it by changing the law. Parliament makes laws.”
The problem, for those who want to change nwith the times, is that they are compelled to operate in line with the majority of farmers in The West order up.
And that is key…only in The West.
Those east of Manitoba operate on a different scheme, and therein lies the rub.
It is laughable, futile even, to think that *this* parliament could simply change the laws.
There is a total lack of understanding of the *inequality* of farmers in this country, when it comes to marketing their own product.
headlines read…..barley prices in free fall on the winnipeg exchange….isn’t the single desk wonderful?????
Isn’t it time for the CWB board to give a bonus to all CWB employees … extra work and all of that … and maybe some extra for anxiety.
By September of 1943, … As a consequence,
the cabinet met and decided that as a wartime price control measure it would provide itself, through the CWB, with a temporary monopoly on wheat. Its stated purpose was to stop a continued advance in wheat prices as well as any further drain on the treasury.
http://marginalizedactiondinosaur.net/?p=761
So it’s ok for Cabinet to create the monopoly but, Cabinet can’t remove it?
Wonder who the judge votes for, not,…
“No, but I’m someone interested in seeing the government follow the law.”
So stephen why can the cabinit create a monopoly by, as you say King, broke the law and was undemocratic but,..
not undo the monopoly by the exact same [undemocratic, unlawful] process?
Barley Drops Limit
Western barley dropped sharply…with cash bids falling as much as C$0.70/bu
Feed wheat posted losses in sympathy with the declines in the barley market.
From http://www.wce.ca
So stephen why can the cabinit create a monopoly by, as you say King, broke the law and was undemocratic but,..
not undo the monopoly by the exact same [undemocratic, unlawful] process?
I’m finding it hard to unscramble this attempt at a question: the short answer would be that today’s cabinet has to follow today’s law.
Harper and Strahl undoubtedly got legal advice from their own department telling them just that, but they chose to ignore it for their own reasons, reasons they should have to explain to farmers and citizens alike. (Don’t hold your breath!)
Meanwhile, there’s no point asking me about the irrelevant actions of King’s cabinet, whatever they may have been. The judge’s decision makes it pretty clear why Harper & Co. couldn’t do to the CWB what they tried to do: they have to follow the law, and they didn’t.
The law, in this country, is whatever the judges say it is. They’ve already “read” things into the Constitution that aren’t there.
Sooo Stephen ..does Canada E of Manitoba vote on mandatory selling to the CWB (for the spectacle!) and then just eat their losses on the contracts the farmers in the E. will be forced to cancel when they are FORCED (by fairness and Justice) to become wheat board serfs?
This is not just about a hated institution that favours big collective farmers, it is about Justice. The West has been a cash cow for E. Canada for as long as this country has existed; now the west is richer…you know what that means…he who pays the bills rules the roost. I can’t include the provinces of Sask and Man because they have lived under oppressive, regressive Stalinist type governments for many years and thus retarded their own development.
If Sask. gets rid of that Loony Lorn albatross they have been lugging the stinking carcass of, for many years, and elects a modern progressive government that will encourage success in individuals, the Eastern fringe of this country had better get used to the back seat and no cow to milk.
The 3 Western provinces could shift the gears of the old Volvo, maybe even trade it in on a new Ford or Chev. Bound to turn up the toes on millions of Birkenstock!
This ruling is just incredibly depressing.
guess it really shows how peasants are ruled in this country
I would remimd stephen that if they can do it to the farmer they can do it to him also on something he cares about.
Canadian Law is willy nilly and has no basis since Trudeau brought in that rag (constitution)
It garantees that lay people will always be carying the hammer and sickle, that communist bastard.
wheatboard control over barly can only be determined by a liberal cabinet apparently!
afterall they are the natural ruling party.
at least they think so and so aparently does the ruling class.
might be time to drink and smoke pot, if your drunk and high maybe this all just won’t matter anymore. Hey but then I guess they’d win cause you’d have become one of them, a liberal!
so depressing, Canuckistan seems so hopeless
Sara,
“the ruling was about the “method” in which it was handled?”
Well, the methods of the Liberals were never overturned by the judges they selected. Why weas that?
Good point whimpy!
“Wonder who the judge votes for”
If I had to make a bet, I’d say Conservative. Raised in Alberta, studies in Alberta, appointed to the court in Alberta. I can’t remember the last time Alberta voted Liberal.
The judge wasn’t asked what their personal opinion was. The judge is asked to make a decision based on the law. A good judge does not let their personal opinions influence their judgement. That has recently been called an “activist judge”. I read the judgement. It seems rooted in law and has been ruled on before by other judges ( with the same results ).
Leslie, your bit of history is very instructive.
First, it shows that not all “conservative” governments actually do conservative things.
Second, you illustrate the failure of government market interference – the failure of the provincial wheat boards. They were rescued by a mega-government – the feds which had deeper pockets, but playing the exact same, failing, game.
Third, the depression was caused by governments doing exactly this sort of thing.
I know, stupid question.
Why does the canadian WHEAT Board control the price of BARLEY?
“Third, the depression was caused by governments doing exactly this sort of thing.”
There is no consenus on what caused the depression. Most believe it was simple market correction. It can’t keep going up and up without ever coming down.
Others believed that it was because the gov’t didn’t spend enough to keep wages high that caused it.
Most believe the first one.
Yes I think it is time we in the colonies break away from high lords of the east.As we have heard many times, the good thing that comes from the east is the sun.
Can a lawless gov’t preside over a true democracy?
For goodness sakes, Stephen, this was a court case. The outcome could as easily gone the other way. Your seem to believe that the government is deliberately being “lawless” prior to a decision being made over whether or not the action was lawful or not. All that the Harper government was trying to do was to allow a group of farmers who supported independent selling to do just that. In other words, they were acting on behalf of the people. I am concerned that with the requirement to bring the issue to Parliament, party politics will prevail — and the interests of the farmers will be lost. I had only to hear that one farmer lost $40,000 on the immediate price fall to feel that the courts have perpetrated a major injustice on this issue. It raises my suspicions about the courts themselves being political tools. I think a case could be made.
Regarding my previous post – I do have a rudimentary grasp of economics.
One of the things I learned about economics is that markets fluctuate. I vaguely remember Farmers being paid a constant and substantive income even when there are droughts and and bad crop years.
What would you (Warwick) do when the farmers, on an absolutely free-market system, when there’s a bad crop year, or when the price of wheat or barley is so low they cannot make a decent living?
It was my non-farmer, non-western perspective that led me to believe that farmers might actually like some income security (much like EI).
If times are bad, I highly doubt some farmers are going to be complaning if and when the CWB pays them more than market value for their product.
The only commodity the cwb handles is wheat and barley.
All other crops are marketed by the farmer him or herself.
I don’t suppose the fact that these are the two major commoditys sold…..have anything to do with the fact that the cwb wants their greedy little fingers in the pie.
What? they don’t figure the farmer can market these by him or herself? Why not, they market everything else!
No wonder barley dropped….customers know they will be getting it for half price again, now that those usless 500 in wpg are back in the saddle again!
common Harper, appeal this ruleing now…lets get on with it!
Hey Throbbin, just where does the extra money come from to pay western farmers when the world grain prices are low?
That’s right, it doesn’t come from anywhere because 98% of the time farmers get WORLD LOW PRICES for their grain when world grain prices are low.
What the CWB does, in reality, is cut the top off of the high world grain prices and equalize the prices into mediocre world grain payments to farmers.
Minus handling fees, under the table payments and donations to favorite political parties, like the crooked Liberal Party of Montreal and Toronto.
But on the other hand, there is NO FLOOR PRICE for grain sold by the CWB.
And so western farmers get the full benefit of low world grains, he said sarcastically.
In fact, the CWB does such a great job of getting premium prices for western grain that only about 70% of western farms are on life support by off-farm income.
Well said Rockyt.
The CWB is and always has been as corrupt. I think it was developed to run small farmers out of business so the CCFers could see their dream of a giant state- owned farm emerge on the Canadian prairies.
Farmers and ranchers used to own their land and they were often self confident, opinionated, independant, anti government characters. Big brother did not like that!! So, with the help of the Liberal Party ‘closet’ Bolsheviks they devised a system to make those ‘clodhoppers’ who dared defy the holy cow (the government officials) DEPENDANT on the government in a very direct way.
We all saw what happened to the farmers who defied the CWB a few years ago and sold their own wheat accross the border – they weredragged into the court in chains like common CRIMINALS and put in the jailhouse. What did they do? Why they defied the holy cow – the CWB!
W. farmers MUST fight this very Liberal judge who does not own the wheat farmers of this country produce; she is not qualified to rule after the fact – a vote by all parties with a dog in the fight was a done deal. Now the Bloc will maybe ask a judge to rule on the separation vote that was staged here a few years ago. Maybe she/he will nullify that vote. Just use your imagination Folks! The Treaty Rights thing is another ‘grey’ area – a judge could overturn the silly dead Queens decision because it was undemocratic; she did not ask the non native or the native people in Canada their opinion.
This judge has set a precedent in her silly pandering to the Liberal Party, with it’s unhealthy ties to the CWB, her daft decision has unforeseen consequences once people realize what she has done – the lawyers are sharpening their pencils, me thinks.