It stated; "Cabinet needs to change this position (defending the CWB). We are asking you, as the Ministers responsible for the negotiating position, to immediately put the need for this change on the Cabinet agenda …We ask that you begin to provide greater consistency in Canada's negotiating position by allowing our agricultural negotiators to explicitly bring the monopoly powers of state trading enterprises into the discussions….For greater clarity, Grain Vision is recommending that the Government of Canada be prepared to discuss and negotiate the matter of exporting state trading enterprises at the WTO."
Predictably, 'Grain Vision' is driven by the interests of a collection of grain companies that stand to make a handsome profit from the end of the CWB. The list of companies signing the letter includes: Cargill Limited, Louis Dreyfus Canada Limited, Rahr Malting Canada Limited, Agricore United (a company whose largest single shareholder is ADM), Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (no longer a farmer cooperative), James Richardson International Limited. The letter was also signed by a handful of groups like the Western Canadian Wheat Growers and the Western Barley Growers. Those groups often claim to be a legitimate voice of farmers but in reality would not exist without the sponsorship largess of big corporations. Some urban chambers of commerce, some Alberta government mandated farm groups, the Grain Growers of Canada, and a few other groups also signed the letter.
If the Americans, Europeans and multinational grain companies get their way, new WTO rules will make it illegal for any group of farmers to organize and collectively bargain for export crops. This becomes an issue of national sovereignty. The principle under attack is the democratic right of citizens or an economic group to have legislation enacted that empowers them to organize effectively in the interests of the majority. To deny Canadian grain farmers this right is also to put at risk this right for farmers producing products under the supply management system. Trade unions, teachers unions, and many others could also be affected by this principle since they are empowered to bargain for their members by legislation under which a majority vote allows them to bargain for the whole group. A wide cross-section of Canadian society should be concerned by the WTO attack on the CWB because they could be the next victims if the principle is established.
Sincerely :
Art Macklin, CWB Director for District 1
Art_Macklin@cwb.ca
Biography for Art Macklin:
Art, his wife Donna and youngest son Nathan operate a family farm in the Peace River Country of northwestern Alberta. Art and his brother, sister-in-law and sister homesteaded the land in the mid sixties and developed the farm from the original forest. Grains, oilseeds, forages, pedigreed seed, pulses, specialty crops and beef cattle are produced on the 1600 acres under cultivation, Art is active in his community and has been a founding director on the board of two local cooperatives. As a member of St. Paul's United Church in Grande Prairie he serves on the Outreach Committee. He is a past president of the Canadian National Farmers Union and was elected by the farmers in his area for three, four-year terms to the former Advisory Committee to the Canadian Wheat Board on which he served as Chairman. Currently elected and serving his second term on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Wheat Board he is also the Chairman of the Canadian International Grains Institute.
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on April 25, 2006]
Note: Art_Macklin@cwb.ca
Stumble It!
"defend the democratic right of Canadian farmers to choose the kind of marketing institutions that will best serve their interests"
How about the democratic right to sell your wheat to whomever you choose? Isn't that more important? Membership in the wheat pool is mandatory. Personally I think being forced to sell products to one and only one organization, at a fixed price, is completely against the norm of Canadian democratic and economic standards, and should be abolished.
Way to pick your battles! The wheat pool is one of the biggest dinosaurs in Canada, and should have been put down years ago. Now I'm a bit more in favour of the WTO.
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Dave Ruston
Their claim is to "lower costs and increase living standards". Since the FTA and then NAFTA and the WTO were forced on the Canadian public and the world, prices have doubled, tripled and quadrupled, rising every day for the survival necessities of life, while wages, small business incomes and living standards have gone down all over.
As cattle producers, we're not in any marketing boards and are thrown at the mercy of a a few major buyers, serving the same multinationals who control the grain markets and who also control cattle prices and can ruin anybody, at any time they wish.
Their purpose is the destruction of the independent family farm system and global food control by multinational carpetbaggers.
In short, they're a group of thieving, cheating criminals under the guise of "free enterprise". The presently dominating market economy is a con job and fraud, controlled by crooks.
The marketing board system is far from being perfect, but at least some independent farmers can earn a survival income under them. Anybody who challenges this right is either brainwashed ideologue, or part of the exploiters.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.
Ontario farmers would FREAK if they lost their freedom and were forced into such a board. The only reason it's happening in the west is because the federal government was able to force it on farmers because of the much greater concentration of voters in central canada. This is truly an example of tyranny of the majority in an otherwise free country.
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"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
(Albert Einstein)
Prices of calves depend very much on how many animals a certain producer puts into the ring. With the meatmarkets controlled and concentrated in a few hands, their buyers are working together to control prices and fill their quotas as fast as possible. E.g. The BSE racket, when we got nothing for our animals, but prices in the supermarkets were going up and meat was imported also from Australia and NZ.
The middlemen always reap the benefits and all major producers are middlemen, who sit in offices and on yachts, while their serfs are doing the work.
Large producers often get twice the price of what the small ones get. The large buyers simply don't bid on a few animals to get rid of them and out of the ring.
Also, the stockyards often put the large lots into the ring first to please the large buyers and by the time the smaller lots get in, there are no buyers left to bid on them. We had some of our calves in the ring at 4 am.
We found that the best time to sell calves is in the first weeks of September, before the large ranchers bring in their herds, usually in October. Unfortunately, the calves are still small in Sept. missing a few more weeks of growth, but
at least we get half decent prices for whatever they are.
Unless, of course, some large producers also decide to sell early, in which case we're cooked and have to give away our beautiful, organic animals for nothing, as we were forced to do many times in the past. The organic meat marketing is the biggest racket, buying animals for next to nothing and selling the meat at obscene prices.
Economic systems based on the bidding process are the easiest to corrupt when certain major buyers control the markets with unlimited funds at their disposal. The same happens in all markets, including labour markets, and in areas, like provinces and countries that elect governments not wanted by big business. They simply ruin the local economies and pick up the pieces for nothing, then install governments that follow their insatiable demands.
BC is a very good example of this racket, because of our abundant resources the multinational mafia wants to control and exploit without any responsibilities to the people, or the environment. We see this going on right here in our neighbourhood, while our so called "government" shut their eyes, not to offend the "foreign investors".
I've never been part of any marketing board, and have never received any government funds, but if the marketing boards are closed down, the whole Canadian agricultural system will be sold offshore and controlled by foreign head offices in New York, or Dusseldorf and Beijing.
So much for ideology based economic systems.
Ed Deak, Big Lake. BC.