Minister Ritz on the CWB Interview on Legal Challenge

[highwayman]

Agstump, what don't YOU understand? Who has said a voluntary pool wont work, the exact idiots that don't wish to relinquish power. If you choose to pool your grain, KNOCK YOURSELF OUT, just leave me the hell out. If you cant succeed without coveting and confiscating your neighbors grain, tuff shit, find another profession. Anyone who feels entitled to their neighbors personal property is delusional and certifiable. Maybe you and comrade OBERG can weave baskets together. The CWB communist kingdom is done and over. GET IT!

[chuckChuck]

Highwayman for all your ranting and raving did you forget your comrades in the Conservatives support soviet style supply management for dairy and poultry? Please tell me how you can opt out of the quota system? Where is your freedom to produce as much as you want in those systems? So all your bullshit about confiscation of property and complaints about goverment intervention in the business of farmers is just hot air.

[charliep]

The issue for the prairie pools was the need to get financing to modernize their primary grain handling system. It was also the need change focus from being a member based cooperative to a profit based company.

Back at you Agstar, where would the prairie pools be today if they didn't change structure/focus? In the context of what is going on today, where will the CWB be if they stay on their current path. Based on the CWB own information, 38 % of wheat permit book holders want change. 49 % of barley growers. CWB information. They want demonstration of benefit to their bottom lines - not politics of single desk.

[agstar77]

Actually it was the governments own handpicked committee that said it would not work.

[Burbert]

Go for it CWB! Did the Cracker and
Harpo et al, believe that the CWB would
roll over fer the politicos and give
themselves up? The CWB has a very, very
strong position and the Courts have
upheld the rule of law in the past.
If'n I was a CWB elected director, I'd
fight fer my job too! Good fer Mr.
Oberg! Down with the gestapo tactics of
Mr. RITZ.... After all this is Comedia
and we have the rule of law in this
great nation. Not the rule of the
Jungle...

[parsley]

Wrangling with the chuckchucks takes away time
that could be well spent on writing a letter to the
Saskatchewan minister of agriculture He needs
a fistful of letters from from choice farmers to
read from at meetings. Highwayman write one
will you and get four of your buds to do the
same. Works for you?Pars

[agstar77]

Gee, Ritz is real interested in the bottom line since there was no cost benefit to this legislation. The Pools might still be around if they had not adopted go big or go home.

[charliep]

So you think the pools would have survived their poor financial situation of the early 1990's with the small capacity wood elevator system? Where would the money have come from to upgrade elevators - cooperative members?

I will stick my neck and suggest staying on the course you suggest would have seen bankrupt cooperatives and more US based companies versus Canadian companies that can compete anywhere in the world.

Change doesn't come easy but sometimes it needs to happen. But I am treating the current as a business issue and not a political one.

[agstar77]

They spent money on ill advised concrete coffins, instead of more cost effective structures. They called in so called outside experts that screwed us over royally.

[charliep]

What you call concrete coffins I would call pretty good profit financed to a significant amount by the wheat and barley handled on behalf of the CWB with guaranteed margin/minimal risk. In your terminology, what makes them concrete coffins is policies which put the wrong grain (read not moving/stored) in their facilities and reduces handle from 10 times turn over to something far less.

[malta]

Agstar
You asked where are the Prairie Pools.
The answer is that the directors of the Pools (some of who now run the CWB) chose to live in the past. For years they refused to modernize and to compete, They took the attitude that "We are the Pool, people will deal with us" As the next generation took over the farms the younger farmers went to the companies that earned the business. The CWB has spent the past 30 years telling us we must do business with them rather than showing us "heres what we've done to deserve your business". Losing the Pools due to the poor management was a loss, losing the CWB will not be.

[Kodiak]

Agster,

I think you’re asking for something you won’t or can’t do yourself. Can you point me to a credible cost/benefit analysis that shows the single desk is a net benefit to my farm or the western grain industry as a whole? And given the nature of the debate, I'm sure you'll agree with me that to be credible, it should be current, independent, and peer reviewed. I’m pretty sure there isn’t one out there. I watch this stuff pretty closely so would have seen it is there is one. But maybe I missed it.

In the absence of compelling and demonstrable proof the single desk provides significant benefit, there is no reason for the CWB single desk to enjoy widespread support, as is evidenced by its own polling and surveying.

The loss of ability to manage and control your farm comes at a cost. There can be no debate about that. So to be of any value at all, the benefit the single desk delivers must be substantially more than the costs of loss of control. Otherwise, the trade-off is just not worth it.

So Agster, show me your supporting cost/benefit analysis. The burden of proof lies with single desk supporters like yourself, not the other way around.