Continued Thread

[parsley]

Your 'court facts' post about farmers fined by the CWB, in the thread "PM answers questions at SARM", don't tell the whole story, CaptnObvious.

Court documents don't paint the big picture They don't tell you about the real licensing practices that took place. They don't tell you about shifting the legal teeth to fine farmers from Wheat Board, to Customs. They don't tell you about planned harm to farmers.

So I'll remind AV'ers. Again.

1. The licensing requirements for the CWB Act applied to all of Canada. For both EXPORT and INTERPROVINCIAL grain sales. That's important.

However, the CWB didn't enforce the export regulations in Eastern Canada; in fact, they arbitrarily chose to withhold export licenses for Western-farmer-owned grain, allowing only grain owned by the Wheat Board to be exported. (At one time the CWB even limited the allotment of grain a farmer could truck to have milled for his own family's yearly use.) Pars

[parsley]

Licensing for export to the USA was the neck-yank tool the CWB used daily on Western farmers. And the Eastern ships owned by Jean Chretin's daughter's in-laws of course wanted it to stay that way. And producer cars headed straight for the ships, bypassing the CWB was also a no-no. After all, why should the graincos go hungry?

Licensing was a CWB trick. Pars.

[parsley]

Everyone should remember Western farmer, Raymond Somerville, who trucked his own grain from his Saskatchewan farm into Alberta, to the feedlot, to feed his own cows, without a CWB license. It was an illegal interprovincial movement of grain. When he got home, the CWB had informed the police to arrest him, and he was jailed for a day until his lawyer arrived. In the end, he finally won his right to legally move his own grain to another province at the Supreme Court of Canada,

The CWB lost, at which time the CWB Gestapo had to concede that Western farmers no longer needed an interprovincial license to truck their own grain when feeding their own cattle. Can you imagine the farmer-income that would be lost if Sask.farmers trucking barley to feedlots in Alberta was still illegal in 2015?

The CWB was prepared to deny concessions to Western farmers until forced by law.

With regards to export sales, the CWB told ONLY Western farmers that only the CWB could export their grain. They invented the buyback scheme to thwart exporting.

What was notable, was that Eastern farmers could cross borders or export whilst the CWB closed their eyes.

An Ontario farmer could simply truck his high-priced feed barley across the border and get a premium price. And then buy cheap Western grain from the CWB to feed. Otoh, the Western farmer was told he had to sell his grain to the CWB and buy back the Board-owned, and only then, would he be issued a license.

Two classes of famers was established in Canada... east and west.

pars

[parsley]

2. Ralph Goodale 's Liberal government downloaded licensing compliance in Custom's Canada.

He had a technical problem with Western farmers who trucked across the border b/c they didn't have to present an actual signed CWB license at Customs. Thus, when Andy McMeachan loaded up his truck with his barley (priced cheap by the CWB), and took it to his other farm in the USA, and then subsequently sold it in the lucrative USA market, he didn't have to present a CWB export license at Customs.

So cagey Goodale in Council quietly approved CWB regulations that legally forced farmers to physically present a CWB license to customs .

And in order to save the CWB's reputation, and avoid the bad-will that come from prosecuting the farmers who paid their salaries, Goodale had Customs , not the CWB, prosecute Western farmers who did not flash the newly minted CWB export license.


Neat trick but it enraged the lions. pars.

[parsley]

So how did the "report in writing" regulation affect
farmers?

Customs were legislated to begin fining farmers, and the CWB's press-partners painted farmers as greedy and criminal.

Fined and reputations lost.

CWB continued to dump farmer-grain cheap. Malt buyers and brew pubs trying to spring up had the CWB yearly hurdle to jump. CWB staff grew. And grew. And grew. Wages spiralled. A CWB grunt began buying and selling on the exchange in the US. And losing. And disguising losses.

Organics suffered, too. Buybacks all of a sudden jumped up sky high. And an organic farmer who held, say, a three year contract for wheat at $15.00 per bushel, found himself paying a buyback he couldn't afford. And so his contracts become a liability to himself. Organic buyback deductions were added to conventional pools who then reaped got the benefits of organic efforts.

The CWB began marketing grain in the well established organic markets, undercutting farmers to gain access to traditional contracts, driving prices down while stealing the buyers, whose names were required to be named on the now-required licenses. Wealth creation was being choked to death. pars

[parsley]

It was a way to control the West, CptnObvious. Buybacks were arbitrarily assigned a dollar-value.

Buybacks became discriminatory. Instead of being a regulator, the CWB officially became a favour-issuer. And a legal thief. And manipulators.

The Liberal government, with Goodale at the helm, along with wildly supportive socialists, and dwindling, militant socialist-farmers, and the CBC, filled backed 423 Main.

All press, and the CBC, were courted by the CWB, with farmers' money, at CWB headquarters in Wnpg, who in turn, influenced judges and lawyers and institutions and caucus.

It was a formidable socialist army, all of them anti Western-farmer marketing, and often subversive, planting sympathizers at public meetings, and organizing stacked agendas. And full of surprises. pars.

[parsley]

I recall going to a small farm meeting, all farmers, most of them active hard-core CWB advocates, where a whack of money mysteriously appeared on the annual financial statement. (Every kind of support must be funded one way or another, doesn't it, I discovered). The auditor gathered back every single financial sheet directly after his oral review of the expenses. I was wide-eyed at the amount of cash inflow showing on the books (which was ignored in the auditor's presentation), so I asked questions which the auditor said he'd speak to privately. I approached him during the break, asking where the money came from, and coerced him, (or charmed, whichever you prefer), to provide me with a copy, decorated with his additional hand-written notes naming the source of the income, and then asked him to officially sign the copy for me. He surprisingly obliged.

Yes, well. That exercise served marketing freedom usefully, many times, in many ways.

But it also revealed how sick the CWB system had become. Pars.

[parsley]

The anti-CWB protests, by decent farmers, were about unfairness, unconstitutionality, corruption and power gone bad, CptnObvious. And they had to happen to end the rot.

Every one of the protesters stood up to the intimidation, alienation and humiliation that the CWB wielded. Rather like the tactics duopolies CN and CP are using on farmers today, isn't it.

Today Tom Jackson is the target the two railroads have chosen to make an example of. They issued a Writ of Execution against his farm, which most would consider unfair and unusual. But the main thing they want to do is to show they are big and powerful; that farmers are a tiny fly speck on the prairie landscape; that farmers will succumb to their authority; that farmers are not important in the scheme of things because shareholders are.

They have forgotten what raw wealth creation is.

And they will lose the respect of their supplier-farmers because of that attitude, as more Tom Jackson's of the world, in various ways, refuse to be bullied. Power gone amiss. Power without decency. Power with no conscience. Jackson's present hunger-strike is akin to giving a finger to CP, but it is a brave finger, and it stands for something. And it has each one if us thinking, "What should I be doing? This can't go on". pars

[parsley]

As to your question, bucket, it was a fair one, about why didn't the present Conservative govt simply rescind Goodale's in Council edict? ......

It is because a Liberal government would simply redo it again next year if they came into power.

Goodale-thinkers act and react like the socialists they don't realize they are. Better to cut compulsory farmer-ties to the Board, and castrate it so it can't breed harm to us in the future. You can't kill that kind of thinking, bucket; you can only kill the institutions that house and feed it.

Parsley.

[parsley]

By the way, o/t, a call for certified-organic brown flax this morning, $60.00 per bushel farmgate, fyo Pars.

[parsley]

Larry Weber has provided a railroad-issue venue for you:

https://www.change.org/p/canadian-parliament-hon-gerry-ritz-hon-ralph-goodale-vision-is-not-a-four-letter-word

I signed it, in spite of the fact Goodale's name was listed. Parsley.

[Braveheart]

I can't/won't sign it with Goodale's name on it.

I'm not ready to forgive or forget.

Parsley, you're visit to history above highlights the ethics of Ralph. No thanks.

[blackpowder]

Kinda like it when your stirred up.
This is what I mean when I say that in the end, the _ _ _ did it to themselves with the help of people like Cptn Oblivious.
And sadly that legacy of attitude lingers within the industry regarding the railroads.
Remember how many years between Toms first strike and 2013? Hope it doesnt take that long this time.

[vvalk]

Remember captn obvious loved the CWB because he was give special treatment. The height of hypocrisy. Either that or he is such a small farmer he shouldn't even be on agriville. Remember he has never had to carried over grain during the 70 years the single desk existed

[Oliver88]

i would of assumed most farms held over grain in the Otto Lang days?