Will our government ever support us?

[carebear300]

Yes I agree we should get rid of all government control and regulation. As long as it is the same for everybody. That means that when Korea wants to dump steel into Canada at half the cost of its production we will stand by and let our own industried all go bankrkupt because they can't compete. That also means that if somebody else can produce a suitable automobile and is willing to ship it into Canada at a loss we will stand by and watch our own automobile industry go down the tubes. And at the same time lets do away with all our social programs because they cost money and somebody else in this world doesn't have that added cost so we will do this to compete. Yep if you want survival of the fittest lets get at her but if that is the case everybody in this country has to suffer the consequences not just the farmer!!!! I have had it up to here with asll this talk of becoming more efficient, all that it has meant to agriculture is that the world wide mega corporations have made more money but if we as a society are all willing to play by these rules so be it. God help us all because we haven't learned anything in the last five hundred years.

[ALICIA]

This must be on some of the story on the National tonight. Of course you only get half of want is going on. But they are talking about a masive kill again, but only as a last resort. If they call for a massive kill are they planing on paying you guys for the cows that are killed or is this a volitary thing.

[wilagro]

Good post Carebear...I pretty well feel as you do.
The last line of your post says it all. In Canada, we haven't learned much except to knuckle under to the WTO and show how stupid that we can be. They have been trying to get rid of our CWB for years as they see it as a threat to THEIR interests. From what I read, the USA through the WTO is doing most of the bitching.
I do not place much trust in OUR negotiators either, they seem awfully naive.

[cowman]

There are "hints" that finally they might be considering a cull but even last week Shirley McClellan stated firmly "no mass cull"?
The fact is if they had killed off a million cows last year, we wouldn't be in such a mess? But then it wouldn't have looked very good to the public? Or at least the urbanites, who have no clue of the realities of the livestock business?
Maybe it is time that they were drug into reality? Yes the porkchop/steak you are eating came from an animal that was shot in the head!
If the government finally realizes that 700 million dollars is actually a pretty cheap solution to our oversupply problem, it will be interesting to see how they will spin that story? I just hope they get their act together and start digging the pits before the ground gets froze too hard! Although in Alberta they might have a tough time finding enough hoes and cats as they are all busy as bees making oil leases!

[cowman]

Have to agree with Carebear and Wilagro on this one!
Gywnneplain; I was never advocating more government workers, or more taxpayer dollars...just laws that protect us from unfair predatory countries and corporations?
The popular theory is that globalism is a good thing? For who? For the big corporations for sure? But how about the average Joe? Globalism means one thing, and one thing alone...the lowest common denominator? So that is good right? Cheaper consumer goods, less taxes right?
The only problem is this. How are you going to compete with the guy who doesn't have to spend a fortune just trying to keep from freezing? How are you going to compete with the guy who has absolutely no environmental costs, no social costs, no labor laws to adhere to, no medical costs, no infrastructure costs?
Whether we like it or not our country has evolved into a high cost state where we have fundamental values that most Canadians support? Do we chuck the whole thing in the garbage and enter the good old dog eat dog world?
The reality is this: When we lose the system we have in place, it won't just be the factory worker or the farmer who has to live like the third world peasant, it will be the whole Canadian population...including that well educated/well paid professional!

[dalek]

I agree. I have a friend who spends the winter in a dairy area in New Zealand. The local high school asked him to teach high school science because he has a 2 year college science degree and they thought he would work cheap. Why? Because since they opened up to compete with the world and cut so much social spending, there isn't enough government money to hire qualified teachers for ALL courses (in the rural schools anyway), so the local parents run their own school and have to decide which courses will get qualified teachers and which will just have to get whoever will work cheaply. No money for janitors or maintenance either, the parents do it themselves.

[cakadu]

The salary quoted last night on the news, for a teacher with 5 years experience and 5 years of university (must have spent a year trying to figure out what they wanted to do) makes $65,800 - according to the figures released by the ATA. They were questioning whether there would be schools who would take the money but not hire the teachers because they were already at tolerable class sizes.

Seems to me when I went to school, there were always over 30 kids in my class and it was never a split class. My how things have changed.

[cowman]

The whole point here is that teacher worth that salary? Maybe they are or maybe they aren't! Is a doctor paid enough? According to them...no!
Whenever you have a situation where a group can control how many people they allow into their "profession" you have in effect created a monopoly? And as with any monopoly you now control the purse strings?
Canada seems to have a shortage of doctors? Here is a novel idea...instead of trying to steal more doctors from other countries, why not train and license more from Canada? Create enough doctors so we get some competition back into the system?
Maybe we need to have a farmer monopoly? Make every farmer join the "association" if he is allowed to sell food? Then when the prices get to low, withold our services until the price rises?
In fact have a real union/monopoly just like the teachers,lawyers, doctors and other "professionals"? Every other successful rip off group does it, why not us?

[cakadu]

Fact of the matter is, cowman, that even if we employed all the medical school graduates that we produced, it would still leave us short of a great many doctors. It's hardest to get doctors into the ob/gyn category as they are the most routinely litigated category.

In order for agriculture to have one voice, it would imply that we would have to agree on certain things. How easy is that to get us to agree? It seems to me that the biggest hurdle we have to overcome is being able to work together towards common goals. How can we move it from an adversarial atmosphere to one of cooperation?

[WoolyBear]

A farmers monopoly makes perfect sense, and all the time someone has been trying to kill the whole idea.

Manitoba had a single desk pork board that got the pork to all the processors that needed our pork at a reasonably fair price to the producer. Everyone at the time was happy. Then along came the large ILO's that figured they were more worthy of doing their own thing, Maple Leaf lobbied the PC government of the time saying " get rid of single desk and we will come to MB".
NOW we have multiple sellers, JM Schneiders, and Mitchells have been bought out by Maple Leaf and there is no transparency in price and ML has most of producers on strings............

The CWB is the next one to go............ Thanks to our American owned companies of Agricore United (ADM) and Cargill.

Sure be nice if farmers could get together like a union and demand a raise every year......