We were going to thank you for donating $30,000 of our tax dollars to support the CWB pro-monopoly court case Mr. Penner refers to, Lorne – but that can wait ’till Wednesday.
Meanwhile, from Liberal MP Mark Eyking, a reminder that “Canadians can rely on Stephane Dion’s defence” of CWB “barely” marketing.
(pdf)
Spelling mistake or Freudian slip? You be the judge.
That’s right, if you oppose communism and centralized market control, you are “working against the democratic principles of the people’s republic” and you will be sent to an insane asylum.
Typical Soviet tactics.
That is what passes as deabte these days, your opponent is Eeeeeeevil.
As Dennis Prager says, ‘conservatives think liberals are just wrong, liberals think conservatives are evil.’
Can Harper be trusted? Hell no! His policies just caused the TSX to jump almost 313 points today.
Lower GST, lower Personal Income Tax, lower Corporate Tax! What the hell is he doing?
Next thing you know he’ll be introducing legislation to disband the Wheat Board!
These are not “da Canadian value”! Besides, “dats
not fair”!
Another classic example of Stephen Harper making the Liberals and the CWB look totally stupid!
The relly amazing thing, though, is how so many farmers continue to get sucked into the delusion perpetuated by the left.
I woke up this morning to some tool on the radio bleating about how the horrible Steven Harpers tax cuts were going to “give” $600 to those who make more than $50,000 a year, while “only” giving “300” to those who make under $30,000. He also had the audacity to suggest that this was “contrary to what you would expect”, because it should always be the poor who receive more money.
I had a great urge to grab him by the throat and proceed to throttle him while giving a quick review of basic mathematics, capitalism, and the mechanics of taxation. Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to get a physical grip on someone through the airwaves.
voting is against democratic principles in liberal candaduh. the oligarchy knows what is best for the great unwashed peasant class.
kneel and kiss the ring of the CWB.
We can only hope that the lame-brain fiberals keep talking about trust.
We know we can trust fiberals to:
1. reinstate GST to seven percent (or higher)
2. deliver taxpayers money in brown paper bags to fiberal friends.
3. allow the taliban to impose its will on the residents of Afghanistan.
4. take “loans” from family members, and piss the money away. Oh you want repayment? but I am a fiberal MP I thought i was exempt.
That alone should be worth ten seats in an election
Yep keep talking about who is trustworthy guys.
http://www.oxygentax.com/node/2
Alex – a tax analogy that even a socialist should be able to understand.
The Liberals will be idiots to campaign on raising taxes. At least they have understood in the past the best course of action was to lie before the election and raise them afterwards. Dion is such a clown he cannot even get the standard Liberal Party procedures right.
I know very little about the CWB. I’m a city dweller. I do support free markets.
I was in Manitoba in September and someone (a CWB supporter) said that the cash price is not the entire price delivered through the CWB, and that farm-gate cash price comparisons with US markets were misleading. She said that the CWB paid a lower cash price up front, and then made payments to farmers at a later date based on the price the CWB itself received in international markets.
Is this true? Has anyone else heard this? If yes, are these later payments included in the charts showing western farmers are getting ripped off?
I don’t like to go into an argument with bad data. The CWB needs to prove that it is paying farmers *more* than free markets would in order to prove its usefulness to farmers. Even then, I would argue that farmers are ripping people off and should be stopped. I don’t need to prove that the CWB pays less.
Steffi supports the CWB. Go figure.
I heard him on the tube today complaining about how the tax cuts “took away $6 billion in federal spending power.”
Like it was theirs to begin with eh ??
its MY money you dufus, not the federal governments.
crjc:
How the CWB works, is that the farmer delivers their grain, gets an initial cheque. They then get one or two additional adjustment cheques over the space of a year and a half at which point you get your final payment.
The CWB calculates what they call a “pooled return outlook” for the crop year that you sell your grain in, which estimates the price that the farmer should receive after all adjustments and final payments are sent out. It’s this pooled return price that is being compared to the spot price in the US or elsewhere whenever these comparisons are done. In short, apples are compared to apples, and western farmers are getting less for their barley and wheat than they SHOULD or COULD get otherwise.
Yes one should thank the NDP for helping fund the fight to put barley back to a single desk. I am sure none of the barley growers are upset they are going to get 10’s of thousands less dollars for their barley this year…
alex – I had to explain that the “rich” are now paying an even larger share of the “operating costs” of the country to an engineering prof today. He too used “the rich are being given more money than the poor” argument.
Are they barely selling?
Are the sales barely happenning?
Or are the barley sales barely happening?
Are they barely selling barley?
Is the wheat board barely holding on?
Just like the Libs are barely an opposition party.
Just putting that out there.
Yes Kate… I’d say Freudian slip.
Isn’t it amazing how you can lead a redneck around and get him/her to do exactly what you want when you wave a dollar in front of him/her? Hey, it worked with the beer and popcorn bribe now didn’t it. If that two four haze ever wears off and they wake up to the realities of the Harpercons aren’t they in for a shock, especially when the economy takes a downturn. Oh but in a cons eyes, good times never can never end.
Can anyone who misspells simple words on a very lame attack ad be trusted?
Andrew at October 31, 2007 6:12 PM
Cute little analogy Andrew, but you forgot to mention. The rich guy got rich off the backs of the poor and that it was the rich guy that owned the restaurant.
‘Democratic principles of the CWB’? Did I read that correctly? I wasn’t aware they were ever accused of being democratic. I’ll have to look into that one. Perhaps put a call into my MP’s office and have him proclaim that, apparently, “My Canada doesn’t include Quebec!”
(Or Ontario, or the Maritimes, or…)
the cwb couldn’t extract a premium from the market even if they had the only outhouse at the saskatoon exhibition.
figures never lie….. but liars figure.go ken go
“The rich guy got rich off the backs of the poor “
Uh oh. Looks like somebody’s off his meds.
Again.
Andrew, that moronic NDP-oid comment on your radio is par for the course, really; the attitude of those on the left regarding your earnings is “This money belongs to the government, and they’ll give you what they think you need”
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
Ahh, alby. So predictable, and yet still so stupid.
Fred, Steffi doesn’t support it in Quebec or Ontario, only the red neck provinces. Get with the nuance.
Albatross, the rich get rich off the backs of their own hard work and smarts. Socialists and liberals get rich off the backs of the working poor.
albatros39a
The poor don’t make people rich, they don’t have any money. The rich invest in each other to lower the cost of production, this lowers prices, increases production and creates jobs which invariably increases the standard of living for the poor. It’s called wealth creation which increases the standard of living of everyone. Handing over a government check (taken from someone) to poor people over and over again will not eliminate poverty. Taking the shackles off people who know how to create wealth will.
Socialists like you need to get off the envy thing and grow up. The “He has more than me BahHa Baha” Baha” schtick is wearing thin.
LEDA “The poor don’t make people rich, they don’t have any money.”
Tell that to Rob Walton.
They don’t need to have money to make Walton rich, they just need be one of the American “have not” class or to live in India or China. But you’re right about them not having any money.
Is there a third option, Kate?
I would go with “Ottawa Liberal ignorance of every farmer* and rancher between the Lake of the Woods and the Rockies”.
(*)Minus everyones’ favourite “rich farmer” – Ralph Goodale – of course.
Wimpy Canadian
“Albatross, the rich get rich off the backs of their own hard work and smarts.”
—>Paris Hilton
crjc the comparison being shown is between cash prices. Andrew is correct in his description of how the CWB pooling system works but that’s not exactly what is getting compared here.
When it comes to barley prairie farmers can sell it as feed to anyone domestically. However if they want to export it or sell it as Malt barley they have to go through the board. Marketing choice would have done away with the ‘Berlin wall’ around western Canada that keeps the barley trapped here. That’s what keeps the price artificially lower.
What was compared was the cash price in Alberta versus the cash price in Montana and low and behold when it looked like the Berlin wall was coming down local buyers bid the price up based on what was going on in the rest of the world. When the Berlin Wall got put back up by the courts those prices reversed themselves.
Andrew again is right when he says it was an apples to apples comparison.
Farmers are losing a pile of money this year because of the Wheat Board. No ifs,ands, or buts about it.
The amount the CWB is costing prairie farmers is substantial. We are a legislated captive group of sellers forced to supply a single buyer.
That single buyer has no legal obligation to try to provide the best price they can to those farmers they buy from, and therein lies the problem. The CWB mandate is to sell wheat and barley from designated area farmers, not all Canadian farmers, just designated area prairie province farmers. Export licenses are granted free of charge to farmers who are NOT in the designated area. Well, not exactly free, the costs for providing that export licence are paid out of the pool accounts and ironically are the at the expense of designated area (prairie province) farmers. The CWB is not accountable to those farmers, and it very much appears by their actions that they consider themselves as having to answer to no-one, including a non-Liberal prime minister.
Not having any access to world markets cost us prairie farmers big time this year.
albatros39a
Never disappoints me.
a total head_up_its_a$$.
Like a very very Hard Boil.
Did anyone catch the huge rally on Capital Hill by Ontario farmers that want to join the Wheat Board?
Me neither.
Sorry but you are comparing apples to oranges –
1. The Montana prices are ACTUAL prices on the spot market for one region of the state ( golden triangle) vs. the Alberta prices which are an ESTIMATE of pooled prices for the entire province. At the end of the day Alberta farmers get about 15-20 dollars/T more than the estimate.
2. The Alberta prices include a deduction for freight, dockage and elevation ( approx. $54/T) that are not reflected in the Montana prices. Subtract those costs from the Montana prices and $’s actually going into the farmers hands are usually better in Alberta.
3. Spot prices are meaningless anyway because Montana farmers actually don’t sell much in that market. They contract 75 to 80% of their grain before they even plant the crop.
This year the avg. contract price for malt barley was 7 bucks per bushel so, at the current spot prices of around 13 per bushel they’re out 6 bucks.
The CWB is not locked into contracts and so is able to sell at prices much closer to, and on occasion higher than, the spot price.
The important measurement is what the farmer gets per bushel for the entire crop at the end of the fiscal year. Alberta will do better than Montana because they’re not stuck with contracts that require them to sell below market prices.
…the Alberta prices which are an ESTIMATE of pooled prices for the entire province.
You’re wrong.
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$Department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agc6582
Ol Nbob is wrong a bunch of other ways too.
The video and the charts in it talk about ‘feed’ barley not ‘malt’ barley.
There are no deductions for freight, dockage and elevation when you sell into the local feed market on either side of the border. That only applies to Malt and only in Canada. Montana farmers get paid their final cash settlement when they deliver.
Its not the farmers that contract 70-80% of their grain, it is the American Maltsters that like to have that amount of product bought ahead of time. Anheiser Busch is not a Montana farmer.
The Wheat board contracts all sorts of grain and locks in the price. Remember what they were crying about after marketing choice was announced, that they had contracted too much Malting barley that they didn’t have at too low a price and to get it from Canadian farmers they would have had to pay a small fortune for it. They are still ‘stuck’ with those contracts and that will be reflected in the Wheat board final payment a year and a half down the road.
In the mean time Montana farmers have already put the money they have earned to good use paying bills and reinvesting in their farms.
And anyone who tracks prices on both sides of the border knows that the Wheat Board price is always below the market price.
The only thing that I want from the Harper govt. is that the legislation to prohibit criminal action against the salesmen of the CWB be recinded.
Well at 4:11 he points to the line and sez it’s the “made in Canada CWB” price which I took to be the PRO rate. It does appear that he’s using the Red Deer prices but that raises even more concerns-
(a) is he comparing what are clearly “bid” prices in Red Deer to actual cash prices in Montana
(b) the Red Deer prices seem to quote non-export feed barley – which, if I’m not mistaken, is not subject to CWB marketing so why would the court decision have any influence on those prices?
(c) the sharp decline in Red Deer prices is not reflected in the Lethbridge prices ( either cash or bid figures) – although they do fall they don’t fall as much or as quickly ( approx 15.00 over 2 weeks it seems).
And most Important:
(d) Feed wheat prices in Red Deer – which were not subject to deregulation and so not affected by the court decision also tanked sharply on the same day as the barley prices
Anyhow – as I pointed out- no matter what the daily price quotes are they’re mostly meaningless because Montana farmers are mostly locked in and can’t take advantage of higher prices the way the CWB can.
Lets add the board of directors to that list.
Nbob said, “(b) the Red Deer prices seem to quote non-export feed barley – which, if I’m not mistaken, is not subject to CWB marketing so why would the court decision have any influence on those prices?”
The fact that the CWB Berlin Wall went back up, cutting Canadian farmers off from direct access to the world market. All of a sudden the supply available got a whole lot bigger and the only competition is the CWB who sells on average well below the world market price. The locals adjusted their price accordingly to reflect this, they lowered them.
Which by the way is how you get the made in Canada price. It’s thanks to the CWB Berlin Wall.
Farmer Joe –
If that’s the case ( bigger supply) how do you explain the price rebound that occured by the end of September?
Anyhow – as I pointed out- no matter what the daily price quotes are they’re mostly meaningless because Montana farmers are mostly locked in and can’t take advantage of higher prices the way the CWB can.
What, they have no choice in the matter?
What’s to explain? It rebounded and thanks to the court decision Alberta farmers are getting cash bids $70-80/tonne less than Montana farmers for their ‘FEED BARLEY’ instead of $20-40/tonne more.
(b) the Red Deer prices seem to quote non-export feed barley – which, if I’m not mistaken, is not subject to CWB marketing so why would the court decision have any influence on those prices?
If Nbob is any example, it’s no wonder socialists need their security blankets, they’d be completely lost in the free market.
What other conclusion is there when he can’t figure out that the price of domestic use feed barley is set by the export price controlled by the CWB Berlin Wall?
“alex – I had to explain that the “rich” are now paying an even larger share of the “operating costs” of the country to an engineering prof today. He too used “the rich are being given more money than the poor” argument.”
No doubt a person that has never been out of school. When I was in university, it was very apparent which profs had actually held real jobs in their life. Common sense is not fostered in a educational institution. I think the same may occur with people who have had government of union jobs all their life.
Trev
Now what about Nbobs claim that, ” The CWB is not locked into contracts and so is able to sell at prices much closer to, and on occasion higher than, the spot price.”
This Reuters news item says otherwise.
“Mon Apr 23, 2007 Maltsters have made significant sales based on contracts for barley supplies with the Canadian Wheat Board beyond Aug. 1, 2007
“We can push (the date) back, or the wheat board and the government, I suspect, will be held fully accountable for the liability this is going to create in terms of costs,” Meijer said.
Maltsters have told government officials, including Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl, that the liability would be in the “high tens of millions” of dollars, Meijer said.
A government analysis accompanying the regulations acknowledged the CWB might not be able to attract enough barley to fill its sales contracts.”http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2330163720070423
And this figure of tens of millions of dollars was based on April Malt barley prices when they were much lower than they are today.
Well Nboob, i myself would have lost 10 grand last year selling barley to the cwb for malt, versus selling it myself for feed.
Yup, The cwb was a big.
On top of that, they extracted another half million in bogus bonus cheques for their workmanship, lest we forget.
I sold a whack of #2 durum this spring to the board, and took home about 3.62 a bushel initial….finals still to come.
I should soon be able to report what those finals were.
I’ll bet if i had sold it for feed, i would have come closer to the dollar amount the cwb is gonna give me for it, than the 13 bucks a bushel it is just across the line.
another example of the cwb’s fine selling ability.
And how much bonus money do you think there gonna extract this year for that salemanship!
Thank God the cwb doesn’t sell peas, flax and canola. I’d have to quite farming!!!
Go Harper!
Lets take another look at this argument of Nbob’s, “Spot prices are meaningless anyway because Montana farmers actually don’t sell much in that market. They contract 75 to 80% of their grain before they even plant the crop.”
It’s not true. But lets suppose that it is. Then most of the farmers in Montana signed contracts that they were happy with at the time. They had a choice whether or not to accept the prices offered.
And what about the 20-30% of farmers that didn’t sign contracts? Spot prices are very important to them, but bob wants us to believe they don’t even exist because they are not part of the ‘majority’.
These farmers made a different and this year it was the right one. Its not up to you, me or the government(CWB) to make these kind of choices on behalf of farmers.
Right or wrong. It is their choice to make.
My dad was a hard working man. He farmed and worked as a mechanic. In minus 30F temps, he hauled wheat on his days off. In or about 1960, shortly after harvest, an elevator agent offered to let him haul four extra loads (400 bus.) so he wouldn’t have to haul in sub zero weather, or take a day off from work.
The CWB got a hold of the agent’s “black book,” aka the “over delivery record.” My dad was hauled into court and publically embarrassed in front of an entire community for being a hard working responsible farmer, citizen, Dad, etc. He was fined $100.00, almost half of what the initial price of what wheat was worth then.
Meanwhile, those farmers who sat in the beer parlour and the curling rink all winter, and had all the time on their hands often didn’t bother hauling because it was “too cold.” In June, they’d plug the elevators, railroads etc. because they procrastinated to the last minute. Those people were, then and now, your average “CWB” supporter.” Needelss to say, few Liberal memberships were ever sold to our family.
The only reason the Liberal CWB exists today is because of a legal technicality.
After WW II the Liberal feds and CD Howe, did not want anybody to profit from having cheap grain left over from the previous price controls, and tried to confiscate all privately owned grain at the time.
The Chief Justice of C of Queens Bench Manitoba ruled against the Liberal CWB’s blatant stealing of property.
The feds went higher, and the five judges of the Manitoba Court of Appeal unanimously ruled against the theft by the Liberal CWB.
The feds went higher and FIVE of seven judges on the SUPREME COURT OF CANADA ruled against the Liberal CWB grain theft in 1950.
But since this legal challenge started in (1947) just before the SCoC became supreme law in Canada, the federal Liberals, thru the legal technicality, appealed to the previous court of last resort, the Privy Council in ENGLAND!
Since the Liberals had just gifted Britain with free wheat ($5 billion worth in today’s money) in the British Wheat Agreement, the Privy Council not surprisingly returned the verdict that the Liberal CWB had the right to steal western farmers’ grain and sell it thru the CWB.
And the Western grain farmer has been royally screwed by the Liberal CWB ever since.
I could write a book about this sad, disgusting, and fraudulent piece of Cdn history, because it is easy to see who has been on the right side of this issue with the farmers.
And it aint the Liberals or NDP.
LEDA “The poor don’t make people rich, they don’t have any money.”
albatros39a says:
Tell that to Rob Walton.
They don’t need to have money to make Walton rich, they just need be one of the American “have not” class or to live in India or China. But you’re right about them not having any money.
So albatros39a if they are so poor how are they making Walton rich; because he gets the best deal from suppliers and can afford lower prices so he “forces” the poor to shop there and still makes a buck. Looks like a service to me.
It’s making that “buck”; albatros39a, that pisses you off, eh?
Would you rather the government supply goods and services so we can monitor who’s doing too well so we can correct the situation a la USSR?
I mean in the USSR we had restaurants closed for lunch, because the staff needed to eat,; unlimited production of size 14 boots because production numbers look better than doing size 9 boots regardless of demand for size 9 boots.
Is that appealing to you?
Say it ain’t so albatros39a