(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Policy formed by ideology rather than facts: dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board.

What is the Canadian Wheat Board?
The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) is a farmer-controlled organization that markets wheat and barley grown by western Canadian producers. Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the CWB is the largest single seller of wheat and barley in the world, holding more than 20 per cent of the international market.

As every respected farm economist who has studied it has affirmed, the Canadian Wheat Board is a well-designed and sustainable policy mechanism that delivers price equity to Canadian grain growers - equity that amounts to over $800 million a year in benefits to Prairie communities.It is also overwhelmingly supported by Canada's grain growers.

BILL C-300
This fall, Bill C-300, An Act to Amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, will come before the House of Commons for Second Reading. Under the banner of “freedom of choice”, this Bill, if passed, will destroy the one desk selling structure of the Canadian Wheat Board, the only thing standing between prairie grain farmers and the market power of the highly concentrated transnational grain sector.

American grain interests have been gunning for the CWB for over 20 years. Canada has won every trade challenge. We should be touting the CWB model for farmers in other countries to emulate. Instead, Bill C-300 would wipe it off the table, and with it, the future of Canadian agriculture.

Seemingly innocuous, Bill C-300 purports to simply offer growers “choice” in the marketing of their wheat. When introduced in the House, it will be couched in terms such as “grower choice” and “support for bio-fuels development”. Make no mistake. Bill C-300 will destroy the single desk selling authority of the Canadian Wheat Board, opening the door to take-over of Canada's grain sector by powerful, transnational grain conglomerates.

What this is and isn't about.
This issue is not about debating the merits of the CWB. Surely we must be able to agree that farmers in a given commodity sector know what is working best for their sector.

The Canadian Wheat Board has withstood challenges under both the WTO and NAFTA and has emerged intact. Despite this, Ottawa is poised to destroy it, placing Canada’s grain sector in the hands of US based transnationals...

Ottawa is prepared to act in contravention of CWB Act
Section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act expressly forbids the Minister to change the act without a prior referendum in support of such changes by the growers.

Chuck Strahl and his new government says that doesn't matter.

Click the link and read up on it. Basically, the CWB is a massive collective bargaining arrangement, a government service to allow independent farmers to compete fairly with megacorporations. Not only does it work, but changing it without the approval of *the only people it affects* is illegal.

Naturally, that's exactly what Harper is trying to do, in service to the monopolists who've spent the last two decades trying to eliminate the ability of individuals to resist monopoly.