Response to Standing Committee

[charliep]

Parsley

You have already gone over but my memory is getting shorter with age.

Under this process, could I offer my wheat directly to a domestic flour mill?I would apply for a license but select my final destination. What would the reporting requirements be? Do I have to indicate final buyer to the CWB?

Can I use agents to represent me? Example, I have 20 neighbors with wheat. We have a US customer who wants a unit train of our wheat. We apply for licenses individually but use an agent. The agent could be anything from an individual to a grain company. The service they offer may vary anywhere from an active role in the sales to simply administering the logistics.

Thoughts.

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie;

The problem with the unit train is the CWB controls the railroads via the CWB Act. So the CWB can force the railroad not to haul the wheat... which happened to the fellow in WPG who wanted a few sacks hauled out to BC in the Supreme Court case... the railway refused to haul the grain.

A farmers truck on the other hand is not under CWB control... hence the problem in stopping farmers from crossing into the US of A!

In the 1950's if a farmer wanted to take a waggon full of wheat to the US of A... the CWB let this farmer go.

I tried to go to the CWB library to research exactly how this worked... and how train loads of seed wheat ended up in Egypt outside the CWB...

BUT the CWB LEGAL dept. banned me from research into this project... after the CWB librarian HAD told me I had permission to come to the library and look into this subject matter!

bUT i AM NOT BITTER!

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley; being you have studied the CWB Act tell me this. The Act states that to move wheat or barley inter-provincially or export you are required to have a license. Does it state that you must have a license to sell these crops within your own province if you don't go through the board.

[TOM4CWB]

Kernel;

The CWB Act controls the commercial millers... and the wheat product producers like bakers and food processors.

If you create your own flour at your own milling facility... the CWB will let you market your flour anywhere in Canada. You will not be allowed to mill any one elses wheat... or the CWB will prevent you from selling the wheat products you have created... and will try to shut down your mill, if you mill someone elses wheat and give the wheat product back...

Further, if you develop a customer base... the CWB can undercut and drive you out of business by supplying cheaper raw products to your competitors...

SO in some respects Ianben is right... the CWB is our own worst enemy... in cutting prices... with a monopoly, or without one. Pooling accounts create this problem without a fully competitive market place.

[parsley]

Good Morning Kernel,

Sorry for the slow response!

Producers are free to sell their wheat and barley in their province. No licence is needed. The catch is......there's no one to buy it. All meaningful buyers are under the control of the CWB who don't allow them to buy it.

The big flour mills are held captive under CWB legislation which designates the feed mills, and the flour mills and the elevators as as "works for the general advantage of Canada".

The CWB Act holds these elevators etc. by the cronkers,but farmers are not included in this group, kernel. Instead, farmers are denied CWB export licenses because the CWB Act has no control over US or Euopean mills. This is why the mills are built on the other side of the border instead of in Canada, and this is the real reason the CWB prevents value-adding.

The problem for the CWB is that the CWB is acting beyond their legislative authority when they deny export licenses to farmers simply because those farers live in a certain area of the country. That smelly little problem spells an end to the CWB.

Parsley

[parsley]

Parsley thanks for the explanation. I kind of knew the logistics of all this CWB control but I wanted you to explain, as you did, so CWB supporters get the message loud and clear on how they operate to oppress the Western Canadian Farmer.

It is time everyone realized how the CWB keeps value-added out of Western Canada and moves it either South or East. The CWB itself does not realize the damage it does to value-added and could care less.

An everybody wonders why rural areas are slowly dying away.