Ritz' Rodeo of Words

[parsley]

How about 1000 phone calls daily to the CWB?


CWB staff cave like butter on a windowsill in summer.

STRESS LEAVE, Where art thou?

Parsley

[parsley]

wd9

Folks in the minister's office don't even know Merchant had launched a court case against the CWB.

That's being heads up, all right.

Right.

Agri-viller farmers are better informed than a lot of staff they end up paying for. It's our business, and hopefully we have learned, the hard way, that nobody has more of a stake in our business than we do.

Parsley

[parsley]

Weber Commodities newsletter obviously didn't drink the kool-chocolate at Ritz' Rah-Rah either:

Quote
"Compare this to hockey. Sometimes the weaker team wins because it has heart. The left has more heart and will win this fight again unless farmers take control of this file."

UNQUOTE


The Government prefers votes to farmers.

Parsley

[Fransisco]

I agree with Adam Smith.

For the most part I think Atlas has already shrugged, not just in barley but in wheat as well, and he is not coming back until the government gets the CWB out of the way.

[parsley]

emailing is , ah, er, so estrogentically busy.

And although paper threats are indeed a formidable nuisance, and a perfect morning coffee supplement, they are not daunting to the blind.

But if farmers give a deadline, and that deadline passes, as does a gallstone, surely they will move to something a little more noticeable.

Like ah, disruption

Disruption works well.

Surely someone noticed the tactics of the grain handlers at the West Coast.

Are there a few Tom and, Harrys out there that can still sit up and take notice of the gall they are being forced to swallow?


Parsley

[parsley]

Fransisco,

Do YOU want to write MP's or do you want hundreds of the MP's mad constituents writing to the MP?

What is most effective?


Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley,

You had better know what the Media are going to do... and how people will react.

If an activity is taken the "wrong" way...

Grain growers will pay.

There is nothing worse than a squabble where folks who SHOULD know better... squabble and fight amongst themselves!

AND Farmers in the 'designated area' are as talented as anyone on the planet... at this 'special' skill! We even have Profs and Special interest groups... dedicated to making ourselves 'Look' horrible!

The Media LOVES this!

[parsley]

Well, that certainly happened in Regina.

First of all, the Minister was hours late. It was freezing cold.

Squabble.

The Minister's speech/format certainly divided the camps sharply.

Maybe farmers need to sit down with each other and make a "how to survive" plan.

A dispute mechanism. lol

Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley,

DO you think we could get Goodale, Easter, and Layton,,, to sit down with say... the Grain Growers of Canada... and resolve this issue?

[parsley]

Every political party I have observed/supported/worked against/ignored, each one of them, never gave a damn about farmers.


Regina Leader-Post
March 4, 2008
By Murray Mandryk


A federal election over barley?


How close we were (or possibly still are) to fighting a national election over the marketing of barley is something that we may never know.

What we do know is that we're no longer quite as close as we were a few days ago. Other political developments appear to be taking precedence.

Notwithstanding the libel chill that Liberal leader Stephane Dion faces in the wake of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's threatened lawsuit over whether now-deceased MP Chuck Cadman was offered a bribe, the burning political question in

Ottawa is this: Were high-ranking Conservatives engaged in the same tawdry politics as the Liberals who brought us the sponsorship scandal?

Suggestions from Dona Cadman (Cadman's widow) that her late husband told her high-ranking Conservatives allegedly dangled a million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for his vote to bring down the Paul Martin government in May 2005 have become an unexploded landmine for Harper's government.

Even with Dona Cadman's most recent comments that she doesn't believe Harper himself knew about the offer, these are still pretty serious allegations of a serious ethical breach. That they are supported by Cadman's daughter and son-in-law only adds to their weight.

The uncertainty created by Cad-scam (as some headline writers call it) likely has made the Conservatives less eager to force Stephane The Unready into a confidence motion that could bring down the minority government.

And, believe it or not, the street theatre we saw in front of the Legislative Building last Friday over barley marketing might have been the proposed vehicle to force just such a vote.

At the "rally", federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced that his government intended to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act to remove the agency's monopoly on barley sales via a bill in the House of Commons. Ritz also hinted his government might make this a vote of confidence, causing many across the country to speculate that we could be going to the polls over what's an incredibly obscure issue ... even in most of Saskatchewan.

Politically, however, this was actually a rather ingenious move.

For all the pushing and shoving (or, better put, swearing) between pro- and anti-Wheat Board forces at the rally, this isn't the biggest issue among Prairie producers. Sure, ending the Wheat Board's monopoly on barley will be harder on smaller producers (though it will be interesting to see if some of the big producers will do quite as well as they think). Either way, comparatively few farmers make their living off barley.

This issue is, however, of huge symbolic importance -- something akin to the gun registry, which seemed to anger a lot more Westerners than it ever affected. And like the gun debate, it seemed to be of even greater symbolic importance to politicians.

For the Liberals, there's the legitimate argument that it would be the first real step toward eliminating the CWB altogether. Wascana Liberal MP Ralph Goodale said earlier this year he couldn't even "imagine a circumstance where the Liberal party would vote for a piece of legislation that attempted to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board".

For the Conservatives, getting rid of the monopoly grain marketing agency has always seemed to be of disproportionate importance.

Having failed to smoke out Stephane Dion and the Liberals on the crime bill, the Afghanistan mission or even the federal budget, the barley controversy is actually a rather powerful statement.

For the Conservatives, the real beauty of forcing an election over the Canadian Wheat Board is that it would quickly be forgotten in the ensuing campaign -- especially elsewhere in the country, where voters haven't even heard of the CWB. That would let the Conservatives make the next election about something else -- like Dion's leadership, or lack thereof.

This sure looked like the Conservative gameplan until the Chuck Cadman story broke.

Now, one can only wonder if the Conservatives still are all that eager to hold a confidence vote and risk going to the polls with such a potentially explosive issue on their plate.

UNQUOTE


Don't look towards those you trusted the most, to care about what happens to you.

Parsley