It ain’t over till it’s …. uh oh…

Justice Shane Perlmutter of Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench on Friday dismissed the eight ex-directors’ motion, filed in December, for an injunction against federal Bill C-18, the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act.

h/t The Glengarrian

The CFL 2012 season schedule!.
The free agency period has been cause for celebration.
A few good-byes to long standing Riders. Thank you Wes and Gene.
And a couple of surprises, see ya Stuuuu and Andy all the best except when you play the Riders!
Two things. The OLine signings mean that whomever wins the starting running back position is going to have some excellent lanes opening up. They also mean that Darian is going to have a bit more time to make decisions.
I love the signings and GM Taman deserves accolades for his yoeman work. Last year showed our weaknesses and on paper GM Taman has addressed those issues. Now it’s up to our new coaching staff to bring the excellence we know wears Rider Green to the field.
How many months till training camp again?

“Right To Work Province.”

A Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench justice has ruled the Public Service Essential Services Act to be unconstitutional.
The decision by Justice Dennis Ball was released Monday in the case against two Saskatchewan labour laws. The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) launched the constitutional challenge against The Public Service Essential Services Act and the Trade Union Amendment Act, two pieces of legislation passed shortly after the Saskatchewan Party first came to power in 2007.

Related Workers Rights! – Nobody needs to own a Caterpillar plant.
Update: Poll spotting!

From left, FMC’s Robert Simpson, QC, MRU’s Pam Simpson and Rubiela and Dwain Lingenfelter at Sien Lok Society of Calgary’s Chinese New Year Banquet.
(h/t Doug)

A new blog by one of Saskatchewan’s best commentators on potash, uranium and energy policy in general, Eric Anderson.

On the home page right now: “Is the potash industry in Saskatchewan expanding too rapidly?”

SDA gets results: Saskatchewan orders math education review
Faster, please.

From the Montreal Gazette, the only part that matters;

“The Conservatives believe in setting the Western farmers free,” said Manitoba Conservative Senator Don Plett. “It’s a great day for Western Canada.”
Shortly after the vote, Gov. Gen. David Johnston gave the bill royal assent. […]
With royal assent and then the government immediately proclaiming the bill, it means the farmer-elected directors of the CWB are out of their jobs and farmers can begin forward contracting their grain sales with whatever grain company they wish. The actual monopoly won’t be lifted until August 2012.

Update: A statement(pdf) from the Grain Growers of Canada, whose news releases generally manage to evade detection by Wheat Board friendly media.
More: Another CBC poll….
UPDATE (CBC): The Canadian Wheat Board announced Friday that its remaining directors met and have decided to discontinue legal challenges to the legislation ending the board’s monopoly on marketing the wheat and barley grown by Western farmers. (Video here).
It’s finally over.

In an unprecedented move, the farmers of Ontario and Quebec have joined in the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) monopoly.

Now is the time at SDA when we celebrate crown corporations!
Leader Post, Nov.30th – SaskTel has released nine managers and a chief technical officer without cause but said it has nothing to do with recent problems plaguing the Crown corporation’s 4G network.
CKOM, Dec. 8th – Some calls from Regina to Saskatoon aren’t getting to where they should and instead are being rerouted to Regina 9-1-1. A 9-1-1 operator tells News Talk Radio that it has been happening since about 9:30 a.m. Their lines have been flooded with confused callers trying to get somewhere else.

Update: This just isn’t my night for linking – the CTV poll is here! My apologies.
Background from Montreal Gazette (link fixed!) – Federal Court ruling on wheat board bill won’t alter decision: Ritz

Apparently, Andrew Scheer missed a field goal. *

Goes horribly wrong…

h/t Larry

Bastards!” yelled purple-faced NFU board member and Alberta farmer Jan Slomp. “Hey, turn around! I’m coming for you!”

You have no idea the satisfaction I get from posting that.
h/t Maz2

CBC, Nov. 15, 2011;

Continuing to pour billions of dollars into declining rural areas without any kind of restructuring is “grossly wasteful,” says Rose Olfert, an economist with the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan..
[…]
About 150 of the villages and towns in southern Saskatchewan have fewer than 100 residents, according to census data.
“You have tiny little dots that can’t really do anything on their own … and you have Saskatoon and Regina,” Olfert said.

Tiny little dots like “Stoughton” and “Forget” and “Kisbey”…

View Larger Map

The province of “tiny dots” is a legacy of a time, eight decades ago, when there were more than 100,000 farms and 600,000 people lived in rural areas.
Today, following a migration to towns and cities through much of the 20th century, only about 350,000 people remain in farm country.

Nary a soul in sight.

But much of the infrastructure has stayed behind. There’s about 26,000 kilometres of highway crisscrossing vast, sparsely populated areas.

Because, God knows – unlike those cities teeming with civil servants and university profs, there’s nothing out there in that wasteland of tiny dots …

… to support their infrastructure.

A new issue of Saskabush is out.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Canadian Wheat Board protest, CBC lens…

Canadian Wheat Board protest, wide angle lens…

(h/t Rolf)
Forget the Ombudsman. Here’s a list of CBC addresses, for those who want to indulge in a little mockery.

Via email,

Not sure if you know anything about the Agrifoods Cooperative. It’s a relic from when dairy cooperatives actually mattered.
A lot of farmers from BC to Saskatchewan have a lot of cash tied up in the coop, and there is a pretty meaningful sized business located there as well. Most of the business is actually yogurt production under the Yoplait brand through a business Agrifoods co-owns with Agropur (the largest cooperative remaining in Canada). Yoplait has decided not to renew the license for yogurt production, and so suddenly the business for these guys will dry up.
So Yoplait offered to buy the yogurt production from Agrifoods at a price that would have given seven bucks a share to members (the current share price is under two dollars). The board said no. They said they would rather start their own brand of yogurt and compete with Yoplait. But they didn’t tell their members. They just told their members the only option was to compete with Yoplait.
So now the members just heard that they could have sold for something like seven bucks a share (or higher) rather than compete and are pretty pissed. There is a activist shareholder group that has a website up and they are trying to get the board to listen to the members and do something in the interests of the farmers.
With more than 2,000 farmers in the co-op and ~20m shares outstanding, this represents up to $140m that could be released to the members, the farmers, if the board listened to their membership and sold the business. Sounds a bit like a certain board that felt it was in the interest of their members to run off and do something crazy like sue the government.

This is all news to me, so I’m posting it for the purposes of information and/or feedback. The Members Action Group website.

Now, we shall pour ourselves a coffee, and fire up our search engines for the media analysis tying the SaskParty’s refusal to support the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly to their resultant collapse in rural support.
While you wait, I did a quick and dirty number crunch to compare the Saskparty percentage of vote in the rural constituencies of the major cereal producing regions of the SE and SW (rounded off) ;

Constituency……….2007 …….. 2011
Cypress ……………… 75% ……… 82%
Swift Current………… 70% ……… 81%
Thunder Creek …….. 64% ……… 80%
Wood River …………. 69% ……… 82%
Cannington …………. 78% ……… 82%
Estevan ……………… 66% ………. 79%
Indian Head ………… 64% ………. 76%
Last Mountain ……… 60% ………. 68%
Melville ……………….. 62% ………. 74%
Moosemin …………… 72% ……….. 77%
Weyburn …………….. 61% ……….. 76%
Yorkton ………………. 59% ……….. 72%
There’s blood in the stubble this morning, I tell ya.
Related – awaiting a new Mercer Report, too.