Agriweek, Morris has it right!

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley,

Morris Dorosh's Agriweek did a great job in the April 2/07 edition of analisis of the barley plebiscite.

This type of excellence will get me to buy my subscription for the next 5 years to Agriweek!

..."Purging duplicates cut the list to 56,000 names, about 30,000 fewer than the total used in Wheat Board director elections. Recipients who returned ballots were required to submit an affidavit testifying that only one vote was being cast per farm unit.

A total of 29,067 usable ballots were manually counted twice by different employees of KPMG, the firm engaged to conduct the vote, in the presence of scrutineers, during the week of March 26. The results were 14,068 votes for a dual market in which barley growers would be free to sell to any buyer including the Board, 4,011 for removing the Board entirely from barley marketing, and 10,987 in favor of retaining the single-desk monopoly. Support for the monopoly was 50.6% in Manitoba, 45.1% in Saskatchewan and 21.4% in Alberta. Opinion in favor of eliminating the Board from barley marketing was more evenly spread, at 14.8% in Manitoba, 12.8% in Saskatchewan and 15.2% in Alberta. In favor of a dual market or elimination of the monopoly were 49.4% of those who voted in Manitoba, 54.9% in Saskatchewan and 78.6% in Alberta.

Over the last two years Alberta farmers grew 48.8% of the barley in western Canada, Saskatchewan farmers 42.3% and Manitoba 8.8%. The 50.6% of farmers in Manitoba who want the monopoly retained account for no more than 4.5% of the barley grown on the prairies, those in Saskatchewan for 19.1% and in Alberta for 7.4%."

He explains well how the legislative orders will be done!

[just_wondering]

These are why I subscribe
why does Mr.Dorish not have a higher profile and sell his colum to weekly papers he is virtually unknown to those who do not subscibe yet is one of the betst opinion writers out there.
To the editors of grain news and Western producer please ask Mr. Dorish to write for you!
BACKGROUNDER / Morris W. Dorosh, Publisher


When the 2006 election was precipitated, the incompetent Ralph Goodale was finance minister. Somebody in his department must have brought to his attention the matter of income trusts and the way they took advantage of an unintended loophole in the tax law to short-circuit hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. Undoubtedly whoever did this had in mind the loss of tax money but the real issue was tax fairness to holders and non-holders of trust units. Goodale tried to do the right thing and plug the loophole. At the first sign of opposition, especially from senior citizens who had been talked into investing in trust units, he turned around and forgot the whole thing. The Conservative party used the incident for election purposes, promising not to touch the trusts. But when it assumed power it inherited a problem bigger than it realized. The Conservatives had to admit they had been wrong and break a high-profile election promise. Finance minister Flaherty had to do substantially what Goodale tried to do. The grey and investment-dealer lobbies reappeared, but to their astonishment nothing happened. Changing the tax treatment of trusts is as unpopular in certain circles now as then and surely harmful to the political interests of the Conservative party. But Flaherty does not budge.

Chuck Strahl is following the same road on the way to Wheat Board reform. Any thing whatever to do with the Board or with western (or for that matter also eastern) farm politics is inevitably explosively controversial. The standard political rule book says that the nearer the next election the more carefully you avoid controversial matters. Not the Hon. Chuck Strahl.

The reason that so many people are so worked up over the government's plan to end the Wheat Board monopoly is that they suddenly seem to have no influence. The directors of the Board, for example, could not have imagined that all the maneuvers and tricks they could think of to embarrass the government and to stir up political opposition would mean so little in Ottawa. They thought it was still politics as usual. They weren't alone.

The Wheat Board directors and supporters of the monopoly have only a short time to start to understand that Strahl means what he says. They would be far better to co-operate and to take a more constructive attitude than to continue with their tantrums. Whether the Wheat Board survives or does not survive is not up to Strahl and not up to the majority of farmers who oppose the lead-pipe marketing monopoly. It is up to the people who are running the Board.

It is not guaranteed that the Board can compete in a voluntary environment, in which people are not forced by law to do business with it. A voluntary-pooling Board obviously can expect that grain companies competing for grain to be energetic about it, even ruthless. That is how they deal with each other and that is the essence of competition, free enterprise and the market system. But if the Wheat Board does not survive as a voluntary entity it will be for one of only two reasons. Either it has overblown and exaggerated its expertise for 70 years to deflect threats to its monopoly powers, or else the people in charge are not up to the task.

On the whole, the principal crown corporations that have been privatized have done very well in intensely competitive environments. It was long assumed that there was nothing improper if Canadian National Railways lost money and had to be subsidized by taxpayers. Now it is one of the most successful and profitable major companies around. PetroCanada was created by Trudeauistes who thought the best business model for an oil company was Pemex, and now it is the second-biggest Canadian oil company that would be profitable if crude oil were $40 a barrel. Air Canada makes money by treating its passengers like cattle, but at least they don't have to subsidize it through their taxes. The Saskatchewan government lost hundreds of millions in potash mining, but now its former crown corporation is the biggest name in fertilizer and the most profitable. It has been done before and it can be done again.

The bottom line is that the Wheat Board is now confronted with the same reality that practically everybody else lives with, certainly every commercial enterprise. Whether you are in business or an employee you have to produce. There are performance yardsticks and ways to measure worth for everyone who does not have a monopoly. There are no meaningful performance yardsticks for monopolies and there is no way to measure their worth. The only way to see how good they are is to expose them to competition.

If the Wheat Board directors keep this up they will be giving up without a fight and it will be forever established that the Board system was a farce and a sham.

BACK TO INDEX



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AGRIWEEK is published weekly except late December by Century Publishing Co., Division of CANVESCO Inc., P.O. Box 444, Winnipeg, Canada R3C 2H6. Tel. (204) 943-8861; FAX (204) 944-8033; e-mail subscriptions@agriweek.com Morris W. Dorosh, President & Publisher; Lynda McCaffrey, General Manager. Information is secured from sources believed reliable but cannot be unconditionally guaranteed.

[cropduster]

Just read mine too guys!!Great thinking.Unlike that which permeates other parts of Winterpeg!!! You also might be interested to know Ritter drives a Ford pickup to the farm!!

[parsley]

Not only does Mr. Dorish make an effort to understand the issues, but he will ask farmers questions. Ask, not tell.

One thing is sure. For ANYONE, anyone wanting to do business with the CWB, their hostility and lack of co-operation is fast becoming their trademark.

Parsley

[cropduster]

Parsnip...Am thinking of submitting request for Ritter`s expense submissions next week under ATI.......Wondering if Zacharias will put them in the `Seducer`???

[parsley]

I am not interested in Ritter's expenses. He can only eat so much!

But it would be rather interesting to see what kind of thick payments the Accredited Exporters pour out of the grain-boat.

Parsley