Perspectives on the Direction of the CWB

[charliep]

Below are some interesting perspectives on the direction of the CWB.

[URL="http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$Department/deptdocs.nsf/all/choice13307"]CWB Perspectives[/URL]

Thoughts?

[parsley]

" strong leadership is about: responding with courage, conviction and vision to the world around you."

So far, with the exception of Chatenay, NOT ONE, except single desk directors have provided strength or courage or conviction at the Directors' table.

Pars

[agstar77]

You should have been a comedian with those comments!

[parsley]

I wasn't going to get into this, but lawsey,

" if it were to give farmers more information about its decisions and activities"

"it"

"it"

Who they hell do Voss and Nielsen think "it" is?

It's them!

The Board of Directors make the motions and pass them. Staff do as instructed,!

Notices of adirector's motion-intent could be announced in media sessions in the Voter-Districts.

With reasons by the directors for making the motions.

Making intent public at the local level is the first step towards pushing change.

The alternative is sitting on ones's hands and grasping one's balls firmly to keep them safe. Pars

[parsley]

Now, here's funny:

Directors, sitting at the Board table for years and years, have finally learned that the CWB

"requires some dramatic, but not radical or even legislative changes to the Wheat Board."

Huh?

And the wisdom that CWB elected Board directors have accrued from their paid tenure is to recommend the following:

"we are committed to seeing the Wheat Board undertake a thorough assessment of this market shift"


Yup, another bloody study for farmers to pay for.

A study!

Take-charge original- planning at its' in-finest.

Now that, agstar, is my idea of funny.

Pars

[Kodiak]

Charlie, it’s hard to see the CWB moving in any direction but backwards. Nothing they have done since 1998 is in any way progressive or innovative. Sure they’ve concocted a myriad of ways to pay farmers for their grain, but all of them are nothing more than variations on a formula which makes sure the pooling system is protected. (Except of course for exemptions for organic farmers.) Basically the CWB has become far more interested in politics and self preservation than in doing even a mediocre job of marketing.
They need the benefit and discipline of good old fashioned marketplace competition. However I don’t see it coming. In looking over director candidate information, it looks to me like those who would choose a voluntary CWB have checked out of the director election process. I see no candidates who are in support of the CWB becoming a voluntary organization, completely controlled by farmers. And our Federal Conservative Government, once promising reform, has done nothing and appears uninterested now in moving that direction.
It is sad, because the only way the CWB will survive is to become voluntary, commercial, and divorced from government. If directors and director candidates would face the truth, and act in "good faith in the best interest of the corporation", this is the position they should be taking. Anything else will lead to the further demise of the organization. Commercial realities and an erosion of support for the system will eventually overwhelm the organization. Being dogmatic about ideology rather than accountable and pragmatic about the business you are running is not an attribute of a good director. A valuable contribution to the board table means questioning the direction the organization is going, asking the hard questions, and advocating changes when necessary. It is not resisting those changes and repeating ideological slogans to the public and to farmers when challenged with facts and figures.

[parsley]

Good comments kodiak.

A valuable director would do the following in his district:

1. Form an electee working group. Use email, phone, skype, and annual meeting to communicate.
2. Set up meetings with the Minister so the farm community has access to CWB Minister. If the Minister has time to provide Maple syrup canapes in Japan, he has time to meet once a year with CWB districts. NOT meetings set by staff. Set by the elected person.

3. Set up a media program.

4. Push change openly.

5.Provide statistics/printed material/info on a website
Provide financial info

6. Invite input from voter/farmers

7. Stop fattening the per diems and provide service.

The people who purport to be serving "farmers" are serving themselves to big helpings, and seconds. IMHO Pars

[agriman]

AGRIWEEK Oct 25 Backgrounder:


Several times in the decade during which two-thirds of Canadian Wheat Board directors have been elected farmers, it looked as if candidates favoring a dual market and loosening of the buying and selling monopoly could win in a sufficient number to, with the appointed directors, gradually begin to modify the Board’s policies and operations and start dismantling the monopoly from within. That is what happened with the hog marketing boards and the Ontario Wheat Producers Marketing Board. In all these cases a consensus developed spontaneously among producers, directors and management that lead-pipe marketing powers are counter-productive. Provincial governments did not interfere, not even that of the People’s Socialist Republic of Manitoba when its single-desk hog board was dismantled.
It never happened in the case of the Wheat Board and it certainly will not happen after this year’s results.
The elections have always overwhelmingly attracted candidates who support the monopoly. Most had and still have backgrounds in the failed wheat pool system. They presided as the pools, one by one, imploded financially and disappeared, substantially on account of mismanagement and miscalculation. The pools eventually morphed into Viterra, now publicly-traded, shareholder-owned and one of the most aggressive and progressive grain companies in the world, which it became only after professional management and a board of seasoned, experienced and qualified directors took over.
Pro-Board, pro-monopoly directors always won most, and in some years all, of the Wheat Board director positions. Voter participation has been persistently low, such as 52% in the last election in 2008 and 51% in 2006. Comparing the vote counts with the results of various producer surveys in which the monopoly was consistently opposed, unaccountably a far higher percentage of farmers who support the monopoly system return their mail-in ballots than do farmers who would prefer a dual market and a voluntary Wheat Board. Add in the squirrelly multiple-choice ballot system which automatically favors the candidate who receives the largest number of first choices, and the results are pretty much pre-ordained.
So it also is with the candidates. In years past farmer-voters could choose between candidates who openly and unequivocally either supported the monopoly or proposed to limit or end it. In 2010 there is no such clear choice in most districts, and even candidates who might be expected to be pro-choice do not take strong or clear anti-monopoly positions in their biographic profiles and policy statements.
When the new 2010 directors enter the hallowed halls of 423 Main St., the first thing they will be shown is who really runs things around there: a handful of veteran directors who have perfected the mythology of the single desk. Early directors’ meetings, like politburo meetings, will be devoted to indoctrination and brainwashing until all signs of independent thought and potential for dissent from rookie directors are stamped out. Things will then continue as they were, with the greatest energy devoted to protecting and preserving the organization. The jihad against the railways will resume, as well as the dictatorship applied to the grain trade. Farmers’ interests will remain secondary to the dominance of the organization and individual farmers’ rights will be systematically abused. The Board’s brazen political activity will re-start, anti-Harper, pro-Liberal and pro-NDP.
This is supposed to be democracy, but it is a misapplied and bastardized democracy. The 60% of the 90% of western farmers who grow at most 10% of the grain determine the commercial and marketing environment for the 10% who produce upwards of 90% and a similar proportion of the value added by prairie wheat and barley production. The two groups have radically different interests. The 10% who have been able to grow their businesses have done so through initiative, drive and taking control of all aspects of their operations, just as any successful business person in any other field is obliged to do. The 90% stuck on 1,000-acre farms have shown that they are not capable of, or not interested in, personal and business success. These are not the kind of people who should be in control. They are maintaining a huge obstacle in front of the 10% of professional, ambitious and motivated farmers who represent the future.
The Harper government has the responsibility to put a stop to this, a responsibility that it accepted in numerous election campaigns. Doing nothing is breaking a serious promise to its party’s most loyal and durable supporters.
It is an inexcusable betrayal of their trust.

[parsley]

I followed the $$ for just one listed here:


http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/election/pdf/FinalRept2008directorelectionspending.pdf

And I googled Ross Keith:

Saskatchewan general election, 1995

Liberal
Ross Keith
3,821 votes
He lost.

So a friend of Goodale's contributed to several CWB farmwer director candidates.

I didn't have the stomach to google any further.

I have said it before.

Change. Meaningful change is needed. Not another stupid study suggested
by "appointment-hopefuls".

Change requires militancy by farmers who know what they need to continue farming. In your face, "Stick it where the sun don't shine" kind of confrontations.

Farmers are having their chain yanked by the dull but sly; the greedy but stupid; by the bold but demeaning;, and like well taught farm boys, they do as they are told. Pars

[parsley]

Nicor = Ross Keith

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley,

Ross Keith WAS an appointed CWB director from 1999 to 2006 and was then replaced by Johnson by PM Harper.

[parsley]

Tom, you arise early and good morning to you!

True. And I kinda forget who appointed him...., uh,wouldn't be...., nah.

Was it the minister who ordered the Manitoba farmers, the Derochers, I think it was, yes, to be raided in the middle of the night?

You know, the same minister who had Andy McMeachan hauled off in in leg chanins and jailed for selling fusarium wheat to the USA instead of burning it like the Wheat Board instructed him? To pay his bills.

Could the frienz of the boared, and wheat board alienses and Funds From Dead Social Lists be hatched from a Wascana marxist orifice?

I won't ponder any longer. Back to writing. Pars