“Farmers have spoken,” Harper said Monday. “They’re sick of the Liberals and the NDP trying to stop freedom and keep prices low for farmers. And, mark my words, this battle isn’t over.
“We may have to wait till next season,, but we’re going to get this market opened, whether the Wheat Board likes it or not, and farmers are eventually going to win this battle.”
A reader who was in attendence at Barley Freedom Day (held at Portage La Prairie, MB on Aug. 1) shares these comments;
Barley Freedom Day was supposed to be the occasion when Western barley farmers would actually be able to enjoy what Eastern barley farmers have enjoyed all along. Choice farmers right across the Prairies were looking forward to capturing the higher prices that the free market can offer; of establishing long term relationships with buyers of their choice, of seeking out niche-markets otherwise unavailable to them, and of partnering in value-added businesses, Instead, these business-farmers must endure a continued-forced relationship with a a patriarchal institution that is intent on continuing mass-exporting raw barley, to be managed and coached by self-serving employees, and be directed by Directors whose political ideology trumps good business decision-making.
The judicial announcement initially knocked the wind out of many choice advocates, but it wasn’t long before they got their second wind. Especially when it was widely rumored that the judicaI determination was made by a protege of Liberal Anne McClellan.
A judicial Review launched by Merchant Law Group several years ago concerning money taken out of farmers’ pooling accounts seems to be stalled in the courts. Stalled to near-death. The Courts seem ambivelent, even receptive, to the untimeliness of the CWB missed deadlines in Merchant’s class action suit on behalf of farmers, but in the same breath, accomodating, no eager, to an institutional CWB in the judicial review of barley.
The bottom line at the Barley Freedom Fighter’s Day Celebration was that farmers again and again expressed the view that the Courts are rampant with political Liberal-bias.
Farmers also repeatedly expressed the view, albeit quietly, that they were quite prepared to run the border. Many felt that any substantive change in the past has come from defiance of the law. Respect is fading fast. Since farmers have traditionally been law-abiding members of society, and our jails are not filled with children from farm families, obviously, it is the court that is losing the respect they demand, That does not bode well for society.
There was a quiet re-affirmation of a dedication to choice marketing at the Barley Freedom Fighters’ Day. That kind of resolve is the worst kind to beat into the ground. Marketing choice will prevail.
Hear Hear!
Prime Minister Harper trying to grant Canadians freedom – one of my heros!!
CBCpravda did not opt to print this story. they wanted it to look like Taliban Jack Layton wants to defend the arctic.
That bit about liberal (and Liberal) political bias in the Courts rings true. Judicial appointees need to be reviewed, in public, political mess and all. The Americans are quite right to do this.
I am encouraging everyone I know to write their MP demanding that they support the Western Canadian Farmers. Send the message to anyone you know in Eastern Canada and remind them that the food they eat, and the beer they drink, comes from farmers who have been oppressed and denied the freedom to market their grain in a fair manner.
This little blog has a loud voice and I ask all of you who read it to join the fight.
Its no doubt that the deep ecology freaks including AL GORE would force all farmers off their land and turn it all into some wilderness just like the nazis wanted to do the green swastika
The East has been putting the screws to the West for a long time; I say, get the chain saw out and cut Ontario away from Manitoba and say good riddens.
My heart pumps purple pee for you.
The Canadian Wheat Board is an arm of the Liberal Party of Toronto, the legal system will circle the wagons to protect one of their own.
Now it seems to me….and I will stand corrected if need be…but isn’t this the same same law firm that championed another class action suit vis a vis residential schools?
What the hell!!! I Know it’s a small legal pool, but nobody from Haradance was interested?
Syncro
If the Canadian Wheat Board was so fantastic why are Ontario farmers not fighting to sell their barley through it?
Isnt the CWB and other like COOPS/pools the spawn of Western farmers?
Of all my time in Canada I always had to laugh at how whiny and reflexively communist the farmers and fishermen were.
I am unfamiliar with the ‘ins-and-outs’ of this issue. Generally I come down on the side of the farmers on this, PROVIDED that their independence from the gov’t is COMPLETE.
Sure, you can sell your grain at top prices to who you see fit – that is the way it should be. But you should also be paying your own crop insurance, and there should be an end to the federal bail outs and subsidy programs too.
Co-ops were created by farmers but the CWB was created by the federal government to protect the food source during the 2nd war.
There is no comparison between co-ops and the CWB
The only thing that matters to the left is that we maintain total dependance on a government to dictate as many elements of a human life possible , AT ALL COSTS.
Timothy Coderre
I think there is a case under the charter
15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
My cousin sells all his barley as feed and grows canola or peas to avoid the CWB.
There are alternatives to the MONOPOLY.
The CPC has formed the government but obviously the Libs have Canadians (via beaurocracy) by the gonads.Time for a majority.
VF ..exactly..and if you were a fence sitter last election, or a disgruntled Canadian who did not vote conservative last time out..park your vote with the conservatives and give PM Harper a majority!
What if 100 Western farmers were to repeat past protests and take a sack of grain over the border to sell by their own free will instead of the Communist Wheat Board, and calmly wait to get arrested and hauled off to court….
And after all the cost and delays associated with overseeing such a large trial is incurred and they are finally in front of the judge….
They produce the invoice showing that the grain they sold was in fact Eastern grain purchased from an Eastern farmer. One invoice showing a single purchase of 100 bags of grain should do the trick….
the libs have vowed to disrupt democracy by any means possible, the courts , the senate , the house. Its not opposition -its insurection
not all us easterners are liberals or agree with the cwb.personally i think the farmers should be allowed to as they pls.
Slightly off topic but stated in the last paragraph of the link it says “Harper continues to weather the storm of controversy generated by his government’s decision not to honour the Atlantic Accords on offshore oil and gas revenues.” Is this a correct statement? Isn’t the Federal Government going with the wishes of the “choice” the provincial PMs made? The problem lies in that they want both old and new programs resulting in higher payments through equalization.
Syncro,
Tony Merchant never met a class action suit he did not like – arthritis medicine, train derailments, residential schools, barley growers among the more recent.
He is the Sam Bernstein of Canada!!
“Instead, these business-farmers must endure a continued-forced relationship with a a patriarchal institution….”
Kinda like the the forced relationship of taxpayers forever subsidizing free-enterprise loving farmers from cradle to grave? Hugo Boss socialism got nothing on this kind of hypocrisy.
correct wood spider, Danny “whine for wine” Williams has the choice of the atlantic accord or the other offer. he wants both.
Newfoundland is the spoiled stepchild of confederation. 50% of all revenue is transferred from the rest of Canada and like a dog at the door they wont leave till they are fed and keep coming back for more.
The Liberal Party of Toronto would simply imprison farmers that don’t comply with their monopoly – and that would end all this fussy debate about human rights and free markets.
Ontario farmers who hold government ‘quota’ for the milk or egg monopoly are happy, so why aren’t western farmers happy?
Ontario farmers who don’t hold ‘quota’ get raided by the police, but they’re not good Liberals, so who cares…
Manuel,
Who in Canada doesn’t benefit, directly or indirectly, from some sort of federal or provincial subsidy? Wiily nilly, we’re all on the take, because that’s the sort of society we have created. David Lewis was right about “corporate welfare bums”, he just didn’t carry his philosophizing through to its obvious conclusion. Work on the assembly line at Bombardier, for example, and you’re in the tough right up to your belly button. Drive a transport truck on the public highway and you’re receiving a level of subsidization that a farmer could only dream about.
BTW, agriculture in Canada is much less heavily subsidized than in the U.S. or the E.U., and those are the folks with whom Canadians have to compete on world markets.
I’m not a farmer.
Kinda like the the forced relationship of taxpayers forever subsidizing free-enterprise loving farmers from cradle to grave?
Or farmers being forced to subsidize the education of your children through land taxes.
Force Ontario/Quebec into the wheat board.
My father owns 22 quarters in northern Saskatchewan. I moved off the farm a decade ago and work as an engineer. I still work at home a bit from time to time. We had another pretty serious argument at the lake this weekend about the wheat board. Too many beers, too few fish.
I am 41 and want the wheat board to end. I have occasionally been stricken with nostalgic madness and mused about farming. Then I recall the government interference and stupidity and get over it.
My father is 68 and wants the wheat board to continue. He thinks that collective marketing is like collective bargaining. That somehow farmers might get a higher price by “going on strike” and not selling. He is pissed at the wheat board in particular (because they don’t represent him, the elections were fake, and figures the board as it is is corrupt) but he likes the *idea* of a wheat board.
We will never agree on this. I, and many other younger people, view instituions such as the wheat board as a powerful government department susceptible to corruption with poor oversight. I don’t want anyone to have that kind of power over me. But older people still view governments as “working for them.”
The wheat board will end, either from within or whithout, eventually. As people like my father retire from the business and move on, and people like me get more involved. It is just a matter of when.