History Tommy Douglas and the NDP

[dmlfarmer]

Seabass: so what do you call the 50% government pays of the premiums of crop insurance and the 50% government pays of the administrative costs of crop insurance? $400 million annually from taxpayers to farmers who choose to have crop insurance sure sounds like assistance to me.

[sumdumguy]

Guess that's the price the taxpayer pays for cheap food. Most of that goes to administration that the farmer never sees.

[SASKFARMER3]

They make money on crop insurance most years.

[seabass]

After 45 years of being in crop ins I can honestly tell u they owe me. Hopefully will get it before I retire. I aint no taker but one good pay day out of them will suit me just fine.
For all the years I subsidized people with cheap wheat the government shud have some money to pay a premium. Oh ya and **** u. U think I'm like some billion dollar syrian refugee looking to get a free ride. U dont know shit.

[farmaholic]

Can anyone actually produce a third party audit report for crop insurance? I think it's alot closer to self sustaining than the cheerleaders of the subsidized premiums would like to admit.

I'm not in it so I guess that's one less tit I'm accused of sucking on. I don't know how we ever farmed without it!!!

[sawfly]

i know conservative don't need facts when they argue but you could at least try.
while i can not be 100%accurate , just going from memory. i will try

a fact . Sask would have 0 potash royalties if not for Blakeney and the NDP.
the battle was in the early 70s.
long before lougheed in 1982

the potash corp.s flat out refused to pay any royalties.

Blakney nationalized part of the industry, and everybody paid the royalties.

he also set up canpotex , which originally was designed to fairly a lot
the export quantity's between the public and private mines .
that turned out to be the best thing for the industry ever.

now the worlds largest potash producer SASK. had a single seller and price setter, with a far bigger market share than OPEC.
that is why potash corp. became the largest fert. co. in the world

and if the NDP royalties on potash were so bad so socialist . why did brad wall bend over backwards, and turn totally anti
free market capitalist.
and block the sale to BHP billaton .

because for some reason Sask. would lose it's royalties in the deal.
that's why.

on oil
yes oil royalties were higher in Sask. from the time of tommy douglas right up to Romano .

the % higher i do not know, but i think it was maybe 20-30% higher.

alberta had been raising rates and
Romano dropped them here, at that point Sask. was actually cheaper.
and i think it still is now.

esp. with royalty holidays on new wells,

i can be argued that the higher rates here certainly delayed oil development here (maybe a big mistake)
.
but you could also argue that Albertas oil came out at 9- 15 -20 $
/barrel . while our reserves are coming out at 40- `100$/ barrel

and all Alberta would have had to do during that time , was bump their rates to Sask.s . think of all the money Alberta left on the table.

Yes the NDP do some bone head things, but no worse or as costly as the Conservative history.

you bitch about NDP medicare that costs 40% less than than the USA .
(you don't know what you have got till it is gone)
we can bitch about freeloaders.
but the freeloaders exist from top to bottom, and NDP to conservitive.

and by the way i have only got 9%
of my crop insurance premium back over time .
So if some of you that always harp about left wing leeches have a bad enough luck to have a number over 100
,
what would that make you?

[chuckChuck]

Seabass you have been farming long enough to have benefited from several adhoc payouts outside of Crop Insurance. Grain Stabilization in the 80s is one. GRIP in Saskatchewan, Plus Devine's acreage loan program. Not to mention the current farm fuel tax discount of 12 cents a litre. Plus all the Public investment in research.

There are also all the benefits of supply management if you are in one of those sectors that are dependent on government intervention.

I am not criticizing farmers for wanting and needing these programs. What bothers me is that many farmers think there should be no social support programs for other alleged "freeloaders" in society.

That is why I pointed out farmers benefit from some public support as well.

Social programs like welfare and EI while providing support for families and individuals also help stabilize economies in a downturn. The last thing you want is 1000s of people with no means of support.

[perfecho]

With idle time, comes lots of nasty stuff....think world would be much better off with meaningful jobs all around, even if had to be subsidized....cheaper all around!

[dmlfarmer]

seabass: do you carry fire insurance on your house? ever collected or do you think the insurance company owes you for that too?

crop insurance is a risk management tool, not a break even strategy. If you want break even, self insure. and quit accepting the subsided premium

[dmlfarmer]

farmaholic: All prairie provinces provide 3rd party audited financial statements of crop insurance that clearly shows both provincial and federal government contributions toward crop insurance premiums. And if revenues exceed indemnity payments, the money is not rebated to either producers or government.

http://www.saskcropinsurance.com/files/annual_reports/AnnualReport2014-2015.pdf
https://www.afsc.ca/doc.aspx?id=7569
https://www.masc.mb.ca/masc.nsf/annual_report_2013_14.pdf