CWB DILEMMA.

[StrawBoss]

To get a quick change to the CWB,let's all ask for a dual marketing option.

The main CWB objective should be to provide another marketing choice for the farmer to sell grain.

The CWB should have their own marketing system and have to compete with other grain buyers.

If the CWB is doing a good job ( as they are telling us ) then the board will keep enough customers to operate a sustainable business or prove that all they are doing is creating employment at the expense of the farmer.

Let’s not try to change the CWB by telling the board how to market or do risk management as a lot of you are trying to suggest, because there is to much hindsight in some of these ideas.

Let’s us vote for a free choice to market our grain and oil seed with no monopoly.
There should be one vote for each producer, one vote for every farm landowner and can be done at the time you fill out your permit book.

This should satisfy most grain producers and we don’t have to tell each other how to market our products, because there are to many book smart marketers and don’t have a clue what’s really happening in the real world.

Comments please.

[parsley]

StrawBoss,
What you can do is urge your present CWB Director to issue you a no-buyback-no-cost export license, just as they do for Ontario farmers.

Then you will be able to market your own grain. All you need is an CWB license to get across the border.

NO need to vote. No need to change the legislation as it already allows the Board to issue the licenses to the likes of you and me if they take a notion. No need to do anything out of the ordinary.

The backroom boys in the CWB sit back there and say, "Yup, you get a license, Nope, you don't", sort of like picking petals off a daisy.

So StrawBoss, if you call up your CWB Director and say how come you guys in the backroom are making policy like this...as opposed to calling him up to change the legislation...That is all it takes, StrawBoss.

And make damn sure the Director you vote for in this election will do just that....issue licenses to farmers in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Then we're home-free.

Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

Strawboss;

Your comments on CWB risk management are basically sound, however, as long as the CWB refuses to allow farmers marketing choice (nocost export licenses), any critisism is justified.

Since the CWB monopoly and single desk are not a part of the CWB Act, and strictly a political decision based on communist principals, the CWB opens itself to many attacks.

The dilemmma is one of the CWB's own making, and MUST be resolved.

As you have correctly pointed out contractual commitments to CWB marketing will allow the CWB a solid base to market from, just as Hog marketers that used to have monopolies retain the majority of the market share today.

Marketing choice will work, and it is the only system with integrety and trust that will protect the CWB from being dismantled in the long term...

[StrawBoss]

Parsley
That is the problem we have now, because everybody wants to change the CWB ways and are only thinking export. I want to eliminate the CWB monopoly, so it just becomes another grain buying company and it has to be competitive, therefore there is no need for export licenses. I don’t want to ask any CWB people for an export license but market my grain the way I choose.

I think most of the farmers are not just interested in exporting their wheat and malting barley, but want a choice to deliver and sell to any grain buyer.

[parsley]

Good Morning StrawBoss,

Parliament has very clearly told farmers by way of legislation, that in order to sell grain interprovincially or in order to export grain, we must obtain a license. The constitution of our country allows the Federal Government to have their finger in trade and commerce. The Act requires a license. What you are asking for is a change in the Act, which the CWB would love, because it would take years and years.

The CWB itself can make happen, what you are asking for, right now. All they have to do is issue you an interprovincial license and you can truck your grain to Robin Hood Mills right naway. Or you can contract directly with a maltster.

At the present time, the licensing Department in the backrooms of the CWB have taken it upon themselves to deny licenses to guys like you who want to deliver straight to a maltster and bypass the Board.

Tom4CWB knows how it works. Once farmers start to understand that the holdup here is the Board itself, and NOT the Act, we can put a lot of pressure on the Board to issue licenses....both interprovincial and export. This monopoly is NOT in the Act, StrawBoss, it's the policy the Board makes.

Art Macklin should be asked why Albertans aren't granted interprovincial licenses to accompany their grain.

What you want can happen tommorow if the Licensing Staff at the CWB are told to smarten up and issue licenses. Goodale can tell them. The elected Directors can tell them. A judge can make it happen.

Parlsey

[parsley]

Parsley, your comments sound like a scheme to avoid the public censure by farmers that would accompany a 'no-cost export license'. What you want to be able to do is undercut the CWB prices in the most favourable markets. You want to make western Canadian wheat, durum and barley more cheaply available to processors in the US. Wait until the North Dakota Wheat Producers get wind of this!! Then they could have a trade challenge advantage.

You want those market returns for yourself, and champion these issues as a matter of individual freedom.

Why not call it what it is and have the real debate - an open market. There is no half pregnant solution here - there either is single desk selling representing western Canadain wheat and barley marketing or there is not. It's an open market or it's single desk selling.

The only reason the fictional dual market notion came about was because the open market concept would never gain farmers' support. It's a smoke screen. So is no-cost export licenses.

Strawboss has the message right - this is about an open market with the CWB acting like any other grain company. Put that argument out to farmers in the election. There is a prescribed process in legislation for adding or deleting any commodity from the CWB mandate.

Tom

[parsley]

thalpenny,

Be careful what your pen reflects because what you describe as a "scheme" is precribed by Parliament, thalpenny.

In another thread, I went to great pains to prove there is a dual market alive and well in Canada. There are those farmers whose grain goes through the Board (forcibly) and then there are those whose grain bypassses the Board (quietly).

Western farmers' grain is forced to pass through the Board, not because the legislation requires it to do so, but because the boys in the CWB's backroom have decided to deny Praire farmers interprovincial and export licenses. For many years, those Backroom Boys have told farmers that the buyback is a legal requirement to getting a license , but most farmers are realizing that the buyback requirement (which the Board describes as the difference between the initial price and the world price), is a baldfaced lie, 'Liar Liar, pants on fire. Nose as long as a telephone wire!', as the childhood chanting goes.

Licenses should be available to DA farmers because the law allows it; it's just that the CWB's Backroom Boys have the audacity to deny them.

The Board is denying licenses because we live in a certain part of the country, thalpenny. Judges won't like that the Wheat Board denies licenses based on where farmers live, because that kind of cancer could grow.... denied licenses because you wear a size #9 shoe. Or the CWB might decide in the backrooms to deny licenses to all Newfoundland women. Or to black farmers who live in Nova Scotia. Or to a flour mill. Or to a grain company. Or because you don't attend a Liberal fundraiser. It's called discrimination, thalpenny, and the CWB is up to it's neck in denying licenses in a discriminatory fashion to Prairie farmers. Farmers have not had a good understanding of how the CWB Act can legally function as opposed to how it Backroom-functions. But that's changing.

You suggest a prescribed process in this thread. You want to discuss a process for adding buckwheat, or spelt, or coriander to the CWB Act. Lovely little diversion, but it does not address licensing denials to Prairie farmers.

Imagine not having to open up the CWB Act. Imagine using the tools available in the Act as it exists. Imagine Prairie farmers getting licenses WITHOUT experts, government sponsored Dog and Pony Shows, reports, consultations, Standing Committee parades, navel gazing Senators, and University of Saskatchewan studies! We could activate the legislation tools already available by simply having the CWB issuing interprovincial and export licenses to DA farmers as the law already permits! Save money. Satisfy farmers. Address inequities. Why don't we?


Perhaps the Government has ordered the Backroom Boys to deny licenses. Perhaps the Board has. Those who are accustomed to selling "advice" to the backroom boys at the CWB will fight tooth and nail against the notion of granting no-buyback licenses". It will be in their best interest to get CWB staff involved, gather up some pooled dollars, and work with Government to 'study the issue". It will be in their best interest to get the CWB Directors involved with the Government , armed with a huge per diem budget scooped up from the pooling accounts, with the intent to change the CWB Act iself. Years of process. Millions of dollars.

thalpenny, you so politely inform us, "There is a prescribed process in legislation for adding or deleting any commodity from the CWB mandate. ", but adding coriander to Board marketing duties has nothing at all to do with licensing restrictions imposed upon DA farmers; rather, it opens a brand new discussion window on whether or not we should put coriander or buckwheat under Board control. A debate that would cost a fortune, and get us nowhere. Muddied waters.

DA water is crystal clear.......Prairie farmers want licenses , thalpenny. We want to get under the same wheat/barley licensing blanket that is available to all Canadians. Licenses are legally available to prairie farmers via the CWB Act, and Prairie farmers want export and interprovincial licenses without doing a buyback. The buyback is NOT an export requirement.


Let's discuss selfishness thalpenny. I am not asking for any special licensing opportunity. I am asking for licensing opportunities that are already available to Canadians outside the Designated Area.

Those same benefits are legally available to farmers INSIDE the Designated Area, but because of the CWB's Backroom policy, I cannot access them. I am not asking for special treatment, only the same treatment as other Canadians enjoy. I am not asking the law to be broken or ammended or overlooked, I am only asking that export licenses be made available to me the same as they are to other Canadians. It's called fairness, thalpenny.

Parsley

[StrawBoss]

Tom Halpenny you are correct – There is a prescribed process in legislation for adding or deleting any commodity from the CWB mandate as was done with canola and oats.

Let all producers and farmland owners vote if they want to delete all grains from the CWB mandate. If the answer is yes, then the CWB stays intact for produces that want to market with the board and it gives the others a marketing choice.

This should stop the bickering on how the CWB should operate and all the coffee shop lawyers just quoting part of the CWB act and pointing out the wrong doings by the CWB. WE as individuals should not force our marketing systems onto others, because I believe this is the basic problem right now.

[parsley]

StrawBoss,
I don't quite understand what you are wanting to do here.

Let's suppose the Wheat Board, through legislative changes , adds flax and canola to their marketing obligations. The way the Act operates now, StrawBoss, is that the Board would not only continue to deny you all export and interprovincial licenses for wheat and barley, but they would deny you the licenses for flax and canola as well.
Your only buyer allowed would be the Board (or their agents).

If that is what you are courting, undoubtdly, the Board will be happy to oblige, but I don't think that is what you mean.

Parsley

[StrawBoss]

Parsley --- I want to delete all the commodities from the CWB control not add canola and flax. The CWB should operate under the same rules as all grain buyers in the open market system. That would give all producers a choice and if you don’t like the way the CWB operates then don’t sell to them. Just calling down the way the board operates isn’t getting us any place.

[parsley]

StrawBoss, you said you "don’t want to ask any CWB people for an export license but market my grain the way I choose", and I really support that notion, but this Government and the Wheat Board won't give up licensing Prairie wheat without a battle.

This isn't about mean-mouthing the Board. This is about expecting Prairie folks to to be treated fairly and decently. And according to legislation.

The Chairman of the Ontario Wheat Producers Marketing Board (OWPMB) was a guest on Alberta's Jim Fisher Radio Show last Wednesday and he informed the listeners that the OWPMB had applied to the Federal Government in order to get authority to issue export licenses to Ontario producers, and bypass Wheat Board licensing . This flies in the face of Parliament, who has granted the CWB SOLE legislated authority to issue export licenses. He indicated the OWPMB had already issued a mock-up export license to someone exporting, which certainly sends a finger-message to the CWB Act.

Apparently the grain load with the bogus export license got through to the US destination and Agriculture Canada and Customs Canada were AWARE of the border crossing, but let it through. Doesn't take a lawyer to figure out what happens to Western farmers when they don't wave a CWB export license at border crossings. That load of grain would have been turned back and the exporter charged.

The question any Prairie farmer should ask, StrawBoss, is why did Customs and the CWB and Ag Canada close their eyes to Ontarians crossing the border, exporting wheat without a CWB license and presenting false documents? Why do Customs and the CWB and Ag Canada go out of their way to fine and jail Prairie farmers? Let's take a cold hard look at what is being done to Prairie folks, StrawBoss. Unless we do, we can't fix it.

Parsley

[AdamSmith]

thalpenny,

Would you consider the Ontario wheat marketing system to be "fiction"

Tell that to Ontario farmers.

What you fail to mention is that while there can only be either a single desk system or an open-market system, which only stands to reason, there can, however, be a Canadian Wheat Board and an open market system.

The CWB existed as a marketing agency within an open market system way back when. The single desk is an add-on, it's not the main structure.

Pooling through a central agency is the main structure and it can continue to exist within an open market system.

Ontario proves the point.

[TOM4CWB]

Thalpenny;

Common sense experience Proves you and your communist theory are wrong.

Take one look at feed barley.

When the CWB dumps feed barley last year on the world market at $135.00/t, western Canadian farmers selling feed barley extracted, by your own admission, $180.00/t.

The CWB is the biggest weight on world market prices of grain, because the CWB works for grain handlers railways and multinationals, not for "designated area" wheat and barley producers.

2001/02 Feed Barley, CPS Wheat, 3Red wheat, Winter Wheat, Feed wheat all are proof that when the CWB needs to extract these grains from us, the CWB pays us less than market value, transfering the extra value to the other players in the value chain.

And If we seek to raise the price by going around the monopoly, you throw us in jail.

Thalpenny, "designated area" wheat and barley producers ARE political prisioners, until the CWB starts issueing nocost export licenses.

The direction the CWB Act gives to the CWB is to sell our grain at prices the CWB deems reasonable, and will promote the sale of our grain in interprovincial and international markets.

This in no way assures me that you will get fair market value, just that it gives you license to sell my grain at whatever price is in the national interests of Canada. It is obvious that the national interests of the Canadian economy (value adders and industrial complex combined) are well served by making the lowest price the law, and jailing anyone who would try to get a higher price.

I know you are trying to save the CWB and your own job Thalpenny, I believe your methods are destroying grain farmers in western Canada however, and this is sad when you will sacrifice your neighbours farms for a communist principal that has been proven over and over and over not to work.

Strawboss;

If the CWB became a co-op, with a capital base to back its decisions, then it could work.

THe Co-op hog marketing boards work without a monopoly.

If the CWB does a good job, then it will survive as well.

It seems to me the CWB KNOWS it is doing a substandard job.
The CWB knows any competition will prove this to everyone, just as the feed grains prove lack of CWB performance to us.

So the CWB says there are gone and out of here, if they are forced to compete and live up to all the claims they have made over the past half century.

The CWB theory of "extracting a premium" is a fancy theory to fool farmers in the "designated area" into giving up most of their high quality grain at less than fair market value, much of the time.

The PPO contracting system proved this in July.


Give us a daily monopoly cash price, after we have harvested grain in the current crop year, and we will see how good the single desk really is and what it does for us Thalpenny......

Would you take that challenge Thalpenny?

[StrawBoss]

My reason to vote on deleting all commodities from the CWB control is one way to legally strip the board’s monopoly on marketing Canadian grain.

If they have nothing to sell the CWB would have two choices become a co-operative or shutdown. I think as Tom4CWB suggested the co-operative way would still serve the producers that want to support it.

We wouldn’t have to care how long it takes to restructure, but I am sure things will speed up if all the CWB employees jobs are on the line.

I think if this could be accomplished it would be good for all farmers.

[parsley]

Good Morning StrawBoss,

I hope you've put up a lot of straw because with all the snow and cold weather,farmers will need lots of straw!

Your method will certainly work, StrawBoss. Farmers could vote off every commodity and leave the Board with nothing to market! Good for you for thinking of ways to get marketing choice and for putting it on the table for all Agri-villers to mull over. I have a little problem with the time frame we'd have to endure by going through this route, though, but that is probably because I'm not very patient.

Years of dealing with legislation and politicians, and getting politicians involved to open up the Act goes against any farmer's better judgement.Generally, there is a lack of trust in politicians.

Ideally, we need to get marketing choice in a more timely way, and that is what issuing licenses accomplishes, so that is why I put that one on the discussion-table. If the CWB's Licensing Staff was ordered to give licenses to DA farmers, that would provide us with market choice. Right away. The Board of Directors could make the order. Minister Goodale could make that order.

We both want amd need the same thing StrawBoss...market choice.

Parsley