CWB Pool on Marketing Freedom Day!!

[Raven]

I do not claim prospertity, but I do claim freedom now in the designated area because I get no-cost export licences for the wheat and barley I grow. So do all the eastern farmers of Canada. Braveheart, I do not understand the joke part of this.

Adam Smith, I share your desire, but does the Conservative Party not have an official policy of a strong CWB, but voluntary?
Do you really want to just ask them to repeal the CWB Act?

[Braveheart]

So Raven, how do you now get no cost export licenses in the designated area? It was my understanding that only pedigreed seed or processed livestock feed qualified for this. (I have grown seed and done it by the way.)

I don't like this concept because it restricts the ability of the domestic grain industry to develop whatever they may desire to do that involves milling wheat or barley or malt barley etc. The export license idea is saying that grain would likely move to the US into northern tier elevators. I won't even get into what would happen were that the case. What I desire is the freedom to do that if needed but really want market forces to arbitrage those prices with ours. Like happened with oats. An export license granted by the CWB or Canada Customs is still something that can be pulled away and still gives someone else the ability to tell me what I can or can't do with my wheat.

I don't know about Adam Smith, but I no longer want a strong voluntary CWB. I want the wheat board gone like yesterday. Relegate it to a dark page in Canada's history next to the chapter on Residential Schools.

[jdepape]

1. Aug 1, 2011 highly unlikely as pointed out - far too much to happen first.

2. I agree with Adam Smith - there's nothing magic about Aug 1. It is only the end of the CWB pool periods.

3. That brings up an important point though. When commodity exchanges make changes to futures contract spex, they always made the changes effective in the first delivery month that has no open interest - no open contracts. Otherwise either the shorts gain or the longs gain - but never both. Someone always loses.

Whatever the change to the CWB, it should be effective where no one has open contracts. To me, that's likely Aug 1 2012 since the CWB probably will have 2011-12 contracts on (with farmers and buyers).

FWIW - Although I doubt the CWB has any milling wheat (or durum) sold for 2011-12, I'd put money on them being short malt barley already.

More thoughts at www.cwbmonitor.blogspot.com

("CWB Monitor" is now short for "Canadian Wheat & Barley Monitor".)

[AdamSmith]

Do you really want to just ask them to repeal the CWB Act?

Yes.

The CWB Act is nothing more than the legislated restriction on the free commercial flow of wheat and barley.

Everything is restricted except that which is permitted by the board.

The purpose of the act is to forcibly funnel all wheat and barley into the hands of the cwb, with the exception of feed grade wheat and barley being permitted to flow freely between provincial boundaries but still can’t be exported.

I say this is NOT the foundation in which you permanently secure a free and open market for wheat and barley.

There is no federal legislation specific to canola, or flax, etc. We have the Canada Grain Act regulating those.

My point is once the feds choose to lift the restriction on wheat and barley there simply is no purpose for the cwb act to exist.

The cwb, as a marketer of wheat can still exist within the open market but 99 out of 100 pages of the cwb act become redundant.

Hence, the repeal of the whole act.

New legislation may or may not be needed to form a new voluntary cwb. But the old act must be tossed onto the ash heap of failed ideas.

[BreadWinner]

Lets shoot for the moon and hopefully we can get off the ground. August 1st is the best time to give us a choice it separates the pooling years and it is a date we are used to using. It has to be done as soon as possible so it doesn't become an election issue in the upcoming provincial elections. If we wait years it will become and issue in the next federal election. Sooner the better, markets don't like uncertaintyand either do customers of the CWB. The annoucment that changes are coming has allready set the wheels in motion.

[AdamSmith]

In my mind the date is a secondary issue.

The main issue is making it bulletproof and making it permanent.

Tinkering with the cwb, while leaving the Act mostly intact, is no permanent solution.

It leaves the feds and the market open to being permanently held hostage to a hostile board of directors, constant uncertainty and lawsuits up the yingyang.

Votes, No buy back licenses, opt outs, opt ins, limits, qualifiers, the we’ll sees, the get back to you laters are things to be avoided like the plague.

First reading of a bill to repeal the cwb act can be done before summer, having it come into force will take longer but will be well worth it in the end.

I told Ottawa yesterday, I’ll wait if I have to because above all it needs to be done right.

[Raven]

Adam, I love what you're saying, and good luck in getting the Conservatives to repeal the CWB Act.

Braveheart. Export licences are granted based upon arbitrary policy. The Conservative government, even when they were only a minirity could have ordered the CWB to grant them to all producers. They are the key to the monopoly over farmers, but without farmer pressure, it doesn't happen.

[newguy]

I do not want a export licence from the CWB. I want the CWB to have nothing to do with my grain in any way. Found out after the last barley vote that nothing can be sugar coated no more.

[parsley]

The CPC has indicated, consistently, for years, that the CWB will be there for those who wan to use it.

When did they change their policy?

[AdamSmith]

So your saying a voluntary wheat pooling marketing organization with no regulatory powers calling themselves the cwb CAN NOT EXIST without a federal act written and enacted during the height of WWII ??

[parsley]

They can. But not immediately.

Unless, of course, you've personally bid on and purchased the ships, filled the signed contracts which have to legally be fulfilled, some several years from now; are underwriting the contracts the accredited agents have entered into, and are willing to sort out the cash advances that you want paid back.

None of the above apply to me personally, so I am able to look upon them as a third party observer.

In the meantime, market access is possible. Tommorow. Or is that a concept so unfamilair, it is unimaginable?

[AdamSmith]

Try looking at it this way, the CWB is an asset of the Federal Government, just like the Canada Post building in my town.

I'd still get my mail even if that building were to close it's doors.I may have to go to a different location to get it but it sure wouldn't mean I'd never get my mail ever again.

Any obligation and function currently done by the cwb can be done by a host of any other governmental depts, especially were that to happen only for transistional purposes.

The problem with saying "just give me a licence" is the HIGH HIGH risk of the gov't doing just that,then wiping their hands and saying "Our job is done here, next."

And besides what makes you think the cwb will be anymore accomodating with granting licences than they have been, say fullfilling access to information requests or respecting the gag order or any number of things?