CWB Pool on Marketing Freedom Day!!

[AdamSmith]

Was just watching Minister Flaherty being interviwed on Power and Politics
and Evan Soloman was aking about the high gas prices and it they are prepared to intervene.

Paraphrasing here, he said something like gas prices are a function of the marketplace and governments have no more business regulating energy markets than they do wheat markets.

Hmmm.

did the finance minister let the cat out of the bag here or just an innocent use of a phrase?

[parsley]

The problem with saying "Just repeal the Act" is that you don't hold any trump cards, do you? other than loudness and perhaps a novel curse word or two.

As you say. The Governmetn owns the assets. They don't own the grain. Let's just say the world price of wheat goes to $20.00. The Board has contracted for $8 for two years. I'm sure they'll repeal the Act so the Gov't can make up the diff. Esp. if the Canadian $ happened to rise.

Playing high stakes poker is fine if you have enuff in the bank to ride it through. I'm not so sure most farmers do...if what hear about op loans is true.

Does your present reach exceed your credibility grasp?

[parsley]

Ask yourself these questions: How many owe the CWB an advance payment? What is the collateral? Do you have the cash to go and pay it off?

[AdamSmith]

Parsley, what are talking about?

None of us owns a trump card.

The feds will do what the feds want to do.

But by your logic so long as the cwb keep issuing cash advances and keep making contracts they can live on in perpetuity.

What happens if prairie farmers ask for licences to export 99.999% of the wheat grown?

Who'll fill the cwb contracts??

oops, can't have that so we'll have to limit a farmer to just 100t. Na, first come first serve would be better. Some are happy the others, oh well!

The cash advance issue is a non starter. That money is owed to the feds anyway. The grain co's would just send it to a different federal account.

As I said the feds will do what the feds want to do. If the feds choose they no longer want to be in the grain business, I suspect they will get out of the grain business.

handing out licences is keeping them in the grain business.

[parsley]

Handing out export licenses:
1. Requires no legislative change
2. Is instant
3. Still collects advances
4. Honors present contracts
5. Opens the flow of grain and commerce that is irreversible. Once started, there will be no turning back.

Asking for legislative change today, means tying the process up in parliamentary commitees etc. for quite some time.

Besides, I don't know who has done the prep work to deal with the the aftermath of 'instant dissolution' that ends dragging out 4 years. Maybe you have. You are capable. But I'm going to guess hasn't been yr winter project. Better hope it's not the Board saying, "We'll look after it"

[Braveheart]

Pars, instant no cost export licenses is a bogus idea. First, it's "export". For the average farmer this isn't easy. Grain doesn't move into American elevators without an end user certificate. Usually too much inconvenience for small volumes of grain for elevator managers to deal with. Cash advances are not owed to the wheat board per se, they only administer them for the Federal gov't. Is there a problem collecting canola advances? Not that i've ever heard. Export licenses do nothing for a domestic industry (pasta, flour, malt, etc.) that we have all wanted to see flourish but have until now been stifled by the CWB. Licenses still leave that nawing feeling that someone can tell you what and when you can do something with your own property. It still has that Soviet feel to it.

No cost licenses would have been ok as an interim measure when the Conservatives only had a minority. Now, we can get the whole enchilada. An open market. Then you'll see irreversible commerce.

By the way, opt out provisions are bogus too. We just need a free and open market.

[Raven]

Adam Smith, its important to correct your statement that the CWB Act was "written and enacted during the height of WWII".
Actually, the CWB Act which was written in 1935 was voluntary, and it was Regulation P.C. 7942 under the war Measures Act which gave the CWB a monopoly control during the war. I have the regulation. I also have a January 8, 1946 letter written by the CWB lawyer telling the government that the powers granted in wartime would not hold up in peacetime.

The Act you are referring to was actually made in 1947 and the significance is that it added Part IV to the Act. Is it important? Well the first clue should be that the CWB excludes it in its website "History". (just checked again- nothing, they skip from 1943 to 1948).

Part IV is the so called monopoly part of the Act and remains essentially unchanged since 1947. From access to information the purpose was to act as a national export/import tax.

I suggest that if export licences which have worked for eastern farmers for years and could be implemented immediately by regulation, are not good enough for you, that rather than demand nothing less than a total repeal of the Act from a government whose policy is to keep the Act that you consider the suggestion of a repeal of Part IV of the Act.

Like you, I love the thought of total destruction, but its just not going to happen.

[parsley]

Brave:
Once I have an interprovincial/export license in hand, I can truck malt barley to Big Rock in Calgary. Or milling wheat to Robin Hood in Ontario.

It means I don't do a buyback, Nor pay a fee.

[BTOfarmallll]

Adam Smith Who????

[Braveheart]

Parsley, you're right, with that license you could go, but I don't need a license to send canola to Yorkton or Velva ND. I'm saying let's not settle for anything less than that. When you wake up on that glorius morning when the monopoly is gone have it so you can send your organic grains anywhere unencumbered by someone else's whims.

Once when I was touting some half-baked scheme I had come up with, you looked at me and said with conviction, "You can't be half pregnant". This time I'm returning the favor.

[TOM4CWB]

Good Discussion!

Simply Totally remove Part IV (4) of the CWB Act and regulations.

Put in Part IV that says no monopoly unless 99% of Canadians want the monopoly to be deployed... so no confusion over the intent of removal of Part IV now in place.

No export licenses at all. No Licensing Department at all. Costs cut. CWB maintains is right to market and control wheat and barley it owns. Vote to add or take away grains as per CWB Act... of course now voluntary base as Part IV is GONE.

[Raven]

"no cost export licenses is a bogus idea" Braveheart, do you know something the CWB doesn't? They tell the court that they have to control them. Of course export licences are not the goal, they are the means.

The CWB system of control is unsustainable without the crucial element of CAPTIVE SUPPLIES. The captive supplies are YOUR GRAIN and all producers grain. Loss of captive supplies means the CWB's legislated control over elevators, railways, flour mills, maltsters etc. will be meaningless.

As an example, right now you are free to sell your grain throughout your province. But it is the CWB's control over any and all of your meaningful buyers and they won't let them buy from you. The CWB of course can't control out of country buyers but they use the legislated requirement (for all Canada) that all exporters must have an export licence. The denial of export licences to producers means they have no one to sell to but the CWB.

Certainly changes to the Act could change this system, but Parliament works slowly. Export licences mean immediate loss of the captive supplies and ENSURES meaningful changes to the CWB Act. Also, we should recognize that the buyers and handlers of our grain benefit from captive supplies and my observation is that they are comfortable with the present system inspite of the controls imposed upon them.

I agree with the CWB on this one: without captive supplies of producer's grain the system will not work.