Burbert Emerges From His Cave

[Choice2U]

I'll be happy to leave without the ability to go back in.

Question...Are some people just plain stupid or do they just not understand that farmers freed from CWB shackles will not necessariy be hauling their x-board grain to the northern US. My canola goes all over the world and I often haul it to my local elevator.

[chaffmeister]

Burbert –

Just to be clear – I didn’t say a cartel wouldn’t work – I said the ones you emulate are voluntary, yet your design would be mandatory. You’re using voluntary organizations to support the argument for a mandatory organization. Your argument is incongruous.

It may seem like a small thing to you, but when it comes to whether the CWB is good or not, the mandatory single desk is the only thing worth discussing.


I’m trying to figure out your logic. Here, through your sarcasm and derision, you chide those that support free markets sarcastically saying “the free market is wonderful, everything is sooooo cheap”. Which I guess really means you don’t believe the free market makes things cheap.

On many earlier posts, you use your same rapier wit and, oh yeah, sarcasm, by saying something like, “the free market is wonderful, we’re all gonna get rich with the big prices we sell at sellin’ in the free market”. Which I guess really means you don’t believe the free market contributes to generating wealth at the producer level.

So, to decipher your sarcasm, it appears you think:

1……the free market will keep farmers from getting good prices on the stuff they sell, and

2……the free market will keep consumers from getting good prices on the stuff they buy.

Can you really have it both ways?

[shaney]

Here is the interview that I did today with Maureen
Fitzhenry from the CWB. We chatted about the issue
to try and clear up some misconceptions.

http://realagriculture.com/2009/11/23/cwb-
responds-to-privacy-allegations/

[parsley]

The CWB chooses an auditor and pays them enough salary to make your head spin.

This lucky auditor does not want to injure next years contract renewal prospects.

Would a keen junior accountant with a sharp eye fully appreciate his/her unstated "duty" to not dampen contract renewal?

Keen young accountants are often quite accomplished at ferreting out technical issues, but very naive about poking political hotspots. Pars
Pars

[parsley]

The question not asked:

"Related to this audit, or veering from protocol, has the CWB supplied personal producer information to ANYONE other than the CWB's accredited agents?"

[shaney]

I didn't ask that question in the interview because she
answered that question through the other questions.
She stated that they have not released any information
to other parties other than the ones listed in the audit.

I am not a big fan of the single desk but I just think
this is going to blow over and be a none event.

[parsley]

For example, let's do an easy one, the Canadian Wheat Board has a reciprocal agreement with Saskatchewan Crop Insurnace Corporation where they freely trade and share producer information.

I missed it being mentioned.

Granted, perhaps they ended the agreement last month.

Does the CWB ever come clean?

When organic producers tried to pin the Wheat Board down with the question:

"Can you provide export liceses to producers?' at all kinds of open forums, and meetings and by written queries, I will say those CWB bastards fudged every time. Every time, including Chairman Ritter. They didnt want to answer the question because then Western farmers would finally realize the CWB was handing out licenses to everyone EXCEPT Western farmers. Willingly.

And so the only way they admitted they could issue licenese was at a Standing Committee of Agriculture in Ottawa grilled by an MP who actually called producers to see what the ruckus was about.

It took the CWB TWO years to admit they could actually issue licenses to whoever, whenever.

The big issue is not Wheat Board sharing information. Surely you have a handle on that one.

The issue is few trust what the CWB tell us. And particularly producers.

Pars