The Editor:
On Feb. 16, 2016, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asked Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay about when he would restore the Canadian Wheat Board, now that evidence is that private grain companies had taken $6.5 billion from grain farmers in the last two years.
The minister’s answer must have shocked Mulcair, and certainly should have shocked Western Canadian farmers.
Yes, he said, the Wheat Board had been sold (reminding Conservatives that a contract is a contract) and he would not be seizing assets, no matter how they were disposed of from G3, which is the combo (joint venture) of Saudi Arabia and Bunge Ltd., one of the world’s giant private grain companies
The fact this response triggered a standing ovation from Conservative MPs speaks volumes.
In October 2011, former Liberal agriculture and agri-food critic Frank Valeriote and Liberal deputy leader and former minister responsible for the CWB, Ralph Goodale said, “The government’s decision to kill single desk selling is a clear violation of the Canadian Wheat Board Act, which insists on democratic producer control. The Act also insists that any changes to the CWB must be made in consultation with their board of directors and with farmers directly, something this government has blatantly refused to do.”
When Bill C-18 was recently tested in the Federal Court, Judge Douglas Campbell, on Dec. 7, 2011, ruled that Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Gerry Ritz violated the terms of the existing CWB Act by failing to hold a vote among producers about his proposal to end the CWB’s monopoly on wheat and barley sales. In other words, the CWB was then illegally gained goods.
So, what in fact MacAulay and the Liberal government are saying is that it is okay for corporate interests to keep illegally gained goods, leaving Western Canadian grain farmers to suffer the consequences.
In spite of the Liberal election promises, we now find the Trudeau government and the new minister of agriculture the Emperor with no clothes who stand revealed as no friends of Western Canadian grain farmers.
And, don’t tell us the majority of us are happy with marketing freedom, because there has yet to be a referendum that can prove it.
Joyce Neufeld
Waldeck, Sask
