As a Conservative Chuck Slow Down!

[SASKFARMER3]

At a City Xmas Party on the weekend with professionals and found it really funny how the CWB came up in conversation with these NDPs.
Their comments were how come the Feds were trying so hard to kill a Canadian Institution and how it is just wrong. (Loss of high paid workers that's all)
Well if the debate is getting air time in the cities in Saskatchewan and that's where the votes are oh boy do us farmers have a problem.
So Chuck wait for a Majority then Kill the CWB.
Politics is a funny business.

[AdamSmith]

Saskfarmer3

All the more reason to put this rig into overdrive and stomp on the gas.

The faster they get by the little brats on the road throwing eggs and tomatoes the better.

Am just curious Saskfarmer, did you ask if any of these city folk who are all concerned about the demise of the cwb vote Conservative in the last election?

[wd9]

Ya but Adam 60% want to retain the single desk. Seems like the majority has spoken and the open marketers are no where near the majority. Time to move on then, wouldn't you say.

If it was 60% of the votes open market then maybe there would have been some data to support your position. As in the last 15 years, open marketing has failed to actually receive majority vote - ever.

I'm fuly in support of open market, but apparently most farmers aren't.

[silverback]

Who needs to "destroy" the CWB???

The point is to let those people who cherish it to keep using it and those people who would like to have some freedom of choice to do so!!

Who cares if 60% of those who returned a ballot are too scared of choice. Let them keep doing what they are doing.

The issue is whether it is my right to do what I think is right for my property.

Maybe Alberta should get their a__ in gear and officially opt out of this sacred Sask/Man. cow.

[Pulseman]

Hi silverback, but you know why this is so scary. If the guys with good grain and good marketing skills get out off the pool, the average price will drop and that will kill the system. It only works if all are pressed in. With the coal to take from the good and give to the bad. Why should I receive the same price close to a market then the guy with a quarter of the the land value per acre way in the back country? CWB is market distracting and blinding.

[AdamSmith]

I sent a little note to Minister Strahl's office yesterday here is a bit of what I wrote.

The results of the CWB director elections on the surface may appear disheartening for those of us striving for market choice, but there is good news in the results as well. The CWB is spinning this result as a decisive indicator of farmer support, but it was a clear defeat for the anti-individual single deskers.

Of approx. 32,000 eligible farmers only 9500 demonstrated active support for the single desk which translates roughly into 30% active support. Sure our side only got 20% but their side was campaigning for a known quantity, the Canadian Wheat Board. Our 20% was achieved campaigning tepidly on a un-known quantity.

Please, Please, Please, don't get sucked into the CWB's spin on the outcome of the director elections. The level of support for the CWB just isn't there. Why others chose not to vote, I can't say for sure, I suspect there are a number of reasons but maybe it comes right down to lack of information from both sides and a healthy skepticism that their vote doesn't mean anything anyway. They feel the CWB will win the day anyway because there is a history of directors abandoning their choice position once elected (Ken Ritter, Rod Flamman, and some even feel Dwayne Anderson was not strong enough, I've heard that may have contributed to his inability to get re-elected).

This brings us to the plebiscite(s). I think the greatest thing these director elections showed us is that if the Minister sets a high bar minimum threshold of 60%-65% of eligible farmers support for the single desk, that level of support just isn't there. There is plenty of precedence for this.

In 1973 the federal government held a plebiscite on putting Canola (****seed) under the CWB, then Minister Otto Lang established the rules that required the Wheat Board side to get at least 60% farmer support. Lang was criticized by MB Ag minister Sam Uskiw who claimed it was rigged in the favour of the open market but never the less the vote was 52.7% for keeping it in the open market and 46.2% for the Wheat Board.

Also I am told that Quebec has a 67% support level in order to set up a marketing board.

And in Manitoba 60% of farmers must approve in order to establish a producer check-off program.

In fact there is so much precedence established already for a result which is greater than a simple majority being needed in order to force farmers into any association against their free will that I doubt you could have one without it.

[stubblejumper]

David Anderson on an interview with CBC on the weekend said there were only 7% of producers who wanted an open market.

[HFL]

Probably only two percent of Men want the right to marry another man and they've got it. So if its seven percent or fourty percent or sixty percent that want to market their own grain why can't they have that right?

[Lifer]

HFL what ever percentage of men want to have that right isn't as important as how large a percentage of the population wishes for them to have that right or freedom.

The results of the vote for directors and what it actually means is still up for debate. Teachers voting on issues of education is interesting information but only one piece of the puzzle.

Farmers or whoever was on this voters list telling the government what the government is going to do in regards to wheat trade in this country is only part of the information. The government needs to consider more then just what farmers want.

[TOM4CWB]

Pulseman,

I don't believe in most cases the "cherrypicking" theory works.

1. Basis is easily a seperate contract from price using futures... therefore delivery can be made over 12-16 months... if there is a good reason to hold the grain.

2. The hedge market can easily absorb our wheat from western Canada... we have insignificant daily volumes in the whole scheme of MGE, KC, and CBOT. The US produces 60mmt of wheat... and our trades are a drop in the bucket.

3. Premium markets in the EU and Japan exist because of personal relationships... they are inelastic markets that suppliers don't shift in and out of easily. If the CWB provides Japan with good wheat and good service... Japan will continue buying wheat from the CWB.

The fearmongering and falling sky attitude the CWB exibits is a sad commentary on how spoiled and arrogant a monopoly seller becomes... when they can blow this kind of smoke in our faces and laugh behind our backs.

[chaffmeister]

Lifer:

Undoubtedly one of the best posts I've read here in a very long time.....

[wd9]

Discussion of individual rights and freedoms, something Canada is not very good at a lot of the time, are always interesting discussions.

Take a cigarette, kills 20 times more people than guns, register the smokers?

Drugs are illegal, yet 85% of domestic violence, car accidents, etc are caused by alcohol. Ban alcohol?

Rights and freedoms. The CWB debate is a wonderful example of so much a bigger picture debate than economics. The balance of what the state impinges versus my own perceived and legislated freedoms, the debate will go on.

[TOM4CWB]

WD9,

VERY WELL SAID!