Break Out The Cranberry Cocktail

Here I am in Alberta working my ass off to make ends meet on my shitty little farm when I hear some prick in New Found Land gets millions of tax payers dollars to grow food, how nice. People wonder why I don't file a tax return anymore, here is a perfect example of why I don't. If these retards want to become more competitive than they need to fight to get rid of government red tape not take yet more tax payers dollars. Perhaps those assholes could fork out like I did for an employees MRI as the government healthcare system is so chronically underfunded, and now we know why - to pay some prick who thinks the government owes them a living.

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My freedom is more important than your great idea.
– Anonymous

Isn't this always the way. Alberta gets billions for mad cow money and a national 'buy canadian' marketing plan, the prairies get a wheat marketing board to guarantee their prices, BC gets almost a billion for its private shipping port and more for its rail lines to ship in cheap crap from China to Ontario, the feds prop up oil exploration whenever it gets too pricey for the market and keeps all the natives from ever benefitting from their own land, the feds spend billions in R&D in ontario and quebec and prop up the auto sector and pharmaceutical sector.

And the most economically deprived area of the country gets a measly two million for some rural farmers and its news.

Oh yes, like New Found Land has only gotten 2 million throughout its lifetime. As for Alberta getting money, overall we have contributed more than we have taken, the same cannot be said for any maritime province and of course the north, the true pig of confederation. Don't feed me the BS about Ontario and Quebec money creating the West either, private companies called the Hudsons Bay Company and the Northwest Company created the West, not the government or some liberal loving big government screw-up province called Ontario. I don't agree with any private company or individual getting government money, if they cannot compete then tuff shit. The high prices we pay are a direct result of government. Your L of gasoline costs so much because of government taxes, not "evil oil company" greed. Now because some farmer in New Found Land gets government money I am sure in the future we will see restrictions on cranberry imports from the US because God forbid, our "Canadian" cranberry producers can't compete with cheap US imports, all those Canadian jobs lost, the blow to our Canadian identity, our culture, our way of life.

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My freedom is more important than your great idea.
– Anonymous

They gave that much to us in BC for a new "Hydrogen highway." All those many hydrogen powered cars,now have a highway to fill up on. Yeh right!. Thirty two acres isn't much but these farmers have a good start. I wish them luck. Cranberry farms here have switched from potatoes as well.

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Expect little from life and get more from it.

Private companies like the Hudson bay, CN/Cp rail had plenty of government hand outs. Acres & acres of land "donated" to them and acess to where ever they decided to go.

Oil companies making record profits every quarter and you claim it's tax money that makes the price of gas go higher. The "tax money" is all that Canadians get out of the deal. Farm subsidies have been in place for many decades and the farmer benefits. Even the Alberta farmer! I flew in a small airplane between Edmonton and Ponoka, a few months ago. Farms in that area only suffer from the land lost, that they need to build their great huge homes on.

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Expect little from life and get more from it.

<blockquote> And the most economically deprived area of the country gets a measly two million for some rural farmers and its news. </blockquote> Harper trying to pull the rug out from under Danny Williams.....? Think a crummy $2 mil will do it....?<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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<b>Don't have a cow, man.<p>- Bart Simpson</p></b> <p>Take a break, will ya? The whole freaking country has received subsidies at one time or another. And don't tell me you paid more than "your fair share" of taxes when Alberta was getting subsidized. It's only been the last few years that Alberta has been swimming in cash.</p>So why begrudge Nfld's chance?<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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Actually, an independant study from Newfoundland showed that actually Newfoundland has paid FAR more into Canada than it has ever gotten out of it.

For Alberta, it got investment the same way every other part of canada did-from the british. Stealing land is the best investment there is, and who do you think paid to throw natives off the land and keep them off?

But mad cow saw billions flow into Alberta, and the feds speend more on R&D in Alberta than they do on ALL investments in most maritime provinces. Hell just the oil sands tax credit gives oil companies more than all the equalization to each maritime province.

But its hard to fight a myth when its so ingrained in some people's heads. It's like that american cartoon with the farmers two most famous quotes "keep them flat footed goombas from Washington out of my hair" and "hurry up with my federal bail out cheque".

A farm is essentially stolen property which is protected by the state, but ironically its those farmers who often most begrudge anybody else getting anything from govenrment. The Royal Underground Commission has some hilarious books on this, they were written just before the mad cow fiasco and it was hilarious, chapter after chapter of these self important farmers bragging how they created an industry without govenrment help (so long as nobody mentions who the land belongs to), then six months later they were all cap in hand in Ottawa demanding that federal bail out cheque.

And forget cranberries, when's the last time you saw milk from Australia, or wheat from Russia, or beef from Brazil on the shelves?

This isn't an individual attack, this is simply how economies operate. 'Subsidies' come in many forms, and straight cash is only one of them, and often not the best. How about doing like with many other commodities and protecting cranberries, or starting up a 'cranberry marketing board'. It would work just as well-probably better.

<blockquote> A farm is essentially stolen property which is protected by the state </blockquote> It's a "comfort" to see put into words something I thought for some time now. But "down on the farm" is a "mom" and "apple pie" issue, and how farms came to be are not to be questioned........<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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"..or starting up a 'cranberry marketing board'..."

In BC it's the buyer who contracts the farm. Ocean Spray for an example, will pay the farmer to grow cranberries for them. The price is negotiated but left flexable. There are not a lot of buyers of cranberries and a marketing board would have little to do.



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Expect little from life and get more from it.

A marketing board can guarantee prices, ala milk and poultry. The incentive here is obviously to get Ocean Spray to do out east what it does out west-in other words, have enough production so that its not 'cheaper' to simply ship in cranberry juice from ontario (or even BC). A marketing board can be any kind of structure, just like a union, one which guarantees prices, or if not, then simply acts as the voice of the industry to producers, or what is common out east, as a co-op which then contracts with producers to get a final product on the shelves like the 'Co-Op' brand. Or even simply does what the name implies- it 'markets' a product by collecting dues from the farmers and then does mass advertising to build up an industry. Fruit juices are all shipped in to the maritimes, and there is no local industry and so like other small scale producers, they may have to compete as 'locally grown' products-in other words, theres LOTS for them to do. The milk industry is barely propped up by the massive advertising campaigns even though milk sales keep falling.

But thats not really the central point here, any time there is any new investment in industry out east people are griping about the maritimes. EVERY part of the canadian economy is propped up by some kind of subsidy, whether its immigration in farming, buyouts when there are industry problems like Nortel, the allowance of massive corruption like mining (not to mention the expropriation of residents land), or plain write offs like to military equipment manufacturers or R&D to 'high technology' which means universities (which are mostly located in BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec).

The Perimeter Institute is one building in Waterloo, Ontario, and it got more R&D funding than the entire province of New Brunswick. Since I know the most about that province let's take a quick look at 'economic development' now that the province is trying to do like New foundland and build up 'self sufficiency'. Now, in a FUNCTIONING country, if one area of the country was dependant on an equalization program, then that country would sit down and say 'how do we build enough economy so that this doesnt' happen'.

You can look at Ireland for that example, the EU makes a concerted effort by allowing new additions to the organization to set differential tax rates to attract new capital investments. They also encourage that new investment and hand it outright subsidies to help build on those-even if it comes from existing EU countries.

In Canada it is virtually the opposite, provinces compete for all industrial development, even to the point that here in Waterloo the well being of citizens is put at risk by developing right over the moraine that provides the city's water. The 'long term' plan for the region is simple: build a pipeline to Lake Erie or Lake Huron. Meanwhile, most of the maritimes consists of villages made up entirely of old people.

There are massive complaints about subsidies, even from people in Ottawa, a city that wouldn't even exist if it weren't for government largesse. The extent of economic development has been 50 million that Irving was given to CLOSE a shipyard (with lots of high paying union jobs), just in time so that now it can't compete with all the shipping construction announced by Harper) and open a 'synthetic wallboard' plant which has non union low wage jobs, and is dependant on the waste from coal fired electricity plants like Coleson Cove, which guarantees that the province won't get away from coal power.

The other investment has always been highways, which does absolutely nothing for New Brunswickers. Ironically, a partnership just concluded to do one section of highway north of a town called Woodstock, the feds paid half, and the province paid half-which came from money it didn't even have and so the province just added 200 million to its debt. Why that is ironic is because an american firm just announced a study on putting a toll highway, you guessed it, from the border at Woodstock, straight across the state of Maine to Montreal, so that that new piece of highway New Brunswickers (and Canadians) just paid for won't even get used by the trucks it was built for!

ACOA is the lending institution for the feds, and you can go directly to their website and see what the feds consider economic development-the vast majority of it is literally some money going to rural towns to help build or repair bridges, things those municipalities can't afford to do. Some money goes to prop up the occasional company that does something high tech, but there are so few that any that actually exists will get money simply because it represents the entire industry there.

Sorry for the lengthy rant, but that kind of hypocrisy just sticks in my craw. In most places its called 'investment' but in the maritimes its always called 'subsidy'. Keep in mind one final point, and thats that this isn't meant to place all the blame on the feds, after all, it was the government of New Brunswick that CHOSE to use federal money to build that highway, all the while griping that it needed federal money to clean up St. John harbour. The point is, that in other areas of Canada there is a 'concerted' effort by the federal government to act in that areas best interest (or what it sees as that).

So they will keep the Lubicons in poverty even if it means international censure, to ensure they don't actually get their land. They will ignore the national calls for energy regulation, particularly from landowners in BC, will happily sell canadian ports to american firms to attract investment, will happily ignore calls on GMO's and hand over the National Department of Agriculture to Monsanto, and will bend over backwards for Toyota and big pharmaceutical companies (take a look at new money for HPV vaccines) so that they stay in Quebec and Toronto. And yet in the maritimes, because there has been no concerted effort, there is no industry to be 'stabilized'. And whenever some meagre bone is tossed then people get all uppity.

One final example is a blogger I read who was griping because a 2% tax on hotels in Halifax goes into a special events fund which was used to 'hire' Celine Dion to do a concert there. Even though the only people who pay that tax are tourists, not Haligonians, and even though it amounts to $2 a night and goes toward special events to service those tourists, and even though people can easily avoid the tax by not going there, this was called "the worst kind of corporate welfare". On what planet?

Another "subsidy" for two of the richest provinces in Canada:<br />
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2007/11/11/bovine-tb.html">http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2007/11/11/bovine-tb.html</a><p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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Subisidy? Like the auto industry has never got a tax break, or low interest loan.

"It can spread to humans or other mammals through prolonged, close contact.

. . .

Human infections with Mycobacterium bovis were relatively common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but dairy pasteurization laws and the culling of infected cows has reduced the number of cases."

Sounds like a health issue, rather than a subsidy.

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The preceding comment deals with mature subject matter, however immaturely presented. Viewer discretion is advised.

That's not much of a subsidy, as any farmer knows 'compensation' is never up to cost, and insurance will pay, but gets their money back in the end. However, in Alberta during the mad cow phase, it was a direct subsidy. Because of their practices a market was closed off and they needed help. In came lots of federal dollars to prop up the market and a national marketing program was started to get people to buy canadian beef-again, you can't find Brazilian beef on your shelves.

That money though didn't go to regular farmers but to american processors. Ironically, the ones who benefitted were those who essentially caused the problem in the first place.

But most countries have loans outstanding to companies, an NDP member (the only one of the past three decades) tried to get publicity for all of Irvings loans, a family company that has about the net worth of the entire provinces budget each year.