I support the 8 RATS. If!!

[parsley]

Brave <3

The Grade Eights must be held personally
accountable and responsible for the decision they
chose to make: to disobey a Ministerial order.
Parliament's order.

And there will be consequences. Pars

[farmaholic]

johnsmith: First of all I am not defending the ProBoard side with this comment. Yes a majority did vote them in, but giving marketing choice was not the only plank in their platform. Was every seat they won based on that single plank, hardly. Would it be fair to say they can legalize prostitution because they have a general majority but some votes were cast for them by people who want prostitution legalized. As I've said in an earlier post it is a lame excuse, we know they said they would do it, so go ahead, but don't say your doing it because we are the elected majority. I bet a huge amount of people who voted Conservative don't even know what this is all about or could give a rat's ass less.

[Burbert]

Comedians, at work on Angriville.
Marketeers, crying fer freedom. Chaos
reins. Multi-nationals and railroads,
licking there chops and drulling cause
there gonna make some real coin soon.
Farmers, being flushed by a gobermont
who has little or no respect fer the
Comedians cause theys so few of them
left out on the farm. The yanks must be
pissing themselves, lookin at what is
now happening. Framer vote is useless
now fer the same reason. Go figure!!!!!

[johnsmith]

It's funny how people have taken my voting comments to be about the Feds, I guess it applies.

[wd9]

I think it is pretty simple. The CWB has always had a legal line item for challenges of all sorts. This is just another legal bill. But in the end we all know where the money comes from.

[Braveheart]

Where the line blurs for me is that the CWB bod has a feduciary responsibility to the CWB. In the past legal challenges have been trade disputes with other nations or railway challenges, etc. This time it is a challenge against the legislator that gave it birth and holds its' fate undeniably in its' hands.

So the question is, does the feduciary responsibility become violated when the bod is not preparing the wheat board for the inevitable?

Yes wd9 we know where the money for these challenges comes from but in my mind the directors owe the farmer a responsibility as well. If they don't think so, they should resign like yesterday.

[wd9]

Just saying it doesn't come from the pool like a bank account. The accounting of the challenge i am sure will just be a legal expense. And we don't even know if the CWB is actually paying for it either.

But aren't crown corporations different? Ultimately the bod's boss is it not the government? Do you sue your own boss when they make decisions and use company money?

[Braveheart]

wd9, I think your last paragraph is on the money with the right questions.

If I remember right, when Ralph set this mess of a new wheat board up, it was called a "blended enterprise". That was because of the combination of elected and appointed directors. This more or less answers your questions. The wheat board is suing its' boss.

It still tracks back to that spineless (but crafty) Ralph Goodale. And yes, he really needs his ass kicked.

[stubblejumper]

590 comments
Email


Print/License
Decrease text size Increase text size




The Harper government, which styles itself “farmers first,” is being accused of hoarding Canadian Wheat Board gains that should be paid to grain growers before Ottawa dismantles the marketing agency's monopoly.

A contingency fund managed by the board is on track to surpass $60-million in cash, but Ottawa says this is not money it will rebate to farmers
Instead, the Tories plan to use available cash to underwrite the shift to a free market for the agency, and they’re in the process of raising the amount this fund can hold to $200-million.

Stewart Wells, a farmer-elected wheat board director who opposes the coming changes, says Ottawa has no right to keep money that ultimately came from grain producers.

“They are expropriating money from farmers to use to float the new grain company that Gerry Ritz is creating,” he said.

The wheat board is about to undergo controversial and divisive changes – which its dissenting chair warns will eventually doom it – as Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz strips the agency of its 68-year role as the bulk seller of western Canadian grain.

What’s left over will be a shadow of the current board and will no longer be acting for 70,000 farmers but rather for any customers it can attract. Board chair Allen Oberg has predicted it will die after promised federal subsidies run out because it lacks assets to compete.

As the Conservatives prepare to free western farmers from having to sell through the board, a pile of cash is amassing in the agency’s contingency fund – an account that contains the proceeds of futures market trading to hedge against risk.

The Harper government has twice in recent weeks moved to raise the fund’s ceiling. It gave formal notice Nov. 9 that it was hiking the limit to $100-million from $60-million.

On Wednesday, government officials said Ottawa would raise the cap further to $200-million.

Mr. Ritz said Ottawa has taken this “prudent action” of raising fund limits to “safeguard the future of a voluntary Canadian Wheat Board.”

A government official, speaking on background, said any available cash would go to reorganization costs and guaranteeing initial payments and borrowing for the new entity.

It’s not clear how big the fund will grow before the board’s monopoly over grain sales ends next summer, and it’s possible future hedging losses could erode its value before August, 2012.

In explaining its first hike to the contingency fund limit last week, Ottawa said it had to raise the ceiling to $100-million because a forecasted surplus from “non-pool activities” would make the account “surpass its current limit of $60-million.” The government argued it might be “distorting pool returns” if it returned contingency-fund surpluses to accounts ultimately rebated to producers.

Deputy Liberal Leader Ralph Goodale, a former federal agriculture minister, said Ottawa should not be using farmers’ money to subsidize what will end up as a private firm.

He said if Ottawa had kept the cap at $60-million, any surplus cash normally destined for it would have to be returned to farmers once the fund hit that limit.

“They’re in the process of trying to drain as much money into this contingency fund as they can,” he said, “and they plan to use it as a slush fund to bankroll everything that’s necessary to kill the single [grain] desk and create this new creature.”

[mustardman]

There is the smell of Fascism in Ottawa