blueblood

I seen that, the CEO and the guy from NBC (forget name) made Robert Kennedy Jr. look like a dumb ass. The market is doing more for curbing pollution through high energy prices more quickly and efficiently than any gov't policy ever will.

Good old rednecks must be doing something right, cowboy country is the richest place in Canada. It must be all of that clean, non pot filled air. I like cowboy country, it must be nice to live in a place where they don't punish you for succeeding, too bad Manitoba doesn't do that. We might be idiot stick rednecks, but we know how to make a buck. Not being potheads sure helps out with that. Don't like how cowboy country operates, leave, everybody's better off. We might be tight ass so-cons, but the tree huggers still want to come and piss on our parade. What a fool Dion is, going to the most fiscal conservative area of Canada and trying to convince Albertans that he knows how to spend their money better than they do, and saying that getting ahead as a province is a bad thing. Apparently according to him, rednecks are suppossed to be poor white trash.

Hence why I put incompetence in quotation marks. Harper runs a tight ship, like he says, get in my way and get walked over. If it was a true gag order, the directors of the CWB wouldn't even be able to write editorials, or appear on TV interviews, or newspaper interviews. They can defend themselves just fine without ripping me off.

Not officially fired for saying something, they'd be fired for "incompetance". Still not much of a gag order if the directors are beating the drum every week in the newspapers.

No, earlier on it was said Harper is divisive in how he runs Canada, I say Trudeau was worse.

If the chinese took over those numerous farms, they're still in trouble. Commies + Agriculture = Problem. They'd be better off letting Canadians and Americans take care of that front.

Harper hasn't exactly "gagged" the board. They can't spend farmer's money in launching ad campaigns. They are and were free to write editorials in newspapers and magazines until hell freezes over.

If Harper is bad for "dividing" the country, then Trudeau is pure evil.

Bwahahaha, so much for the looney left and their "Harper is going to take away your rights" fear mongering drivel

I never thought I'd say this, but I actually want Obama to win the election. GW's reign has done very well for Canada and I personally benefitted from it. It's been proven that Obama was full of it when he said he won't touch NAFTA, and his energy plan for the U.S. really benefits me as an Ag producer. McCain will benefit the U.S. as a country with his broad scoped energy plan, but that doesn't help me out much at all.

I know that you have a point in that, and it's a good one. What I'm confused about is why the CWB brass isn't trumpeting this point. So I'm wondering if a loophole has been found or somebody is missing the boat. It's a fair point and should be in the mainstream debate in the newspapers.

Reading in the Western Producer, the CWB debate is heating up. Harper has unleashed even stronger rhetoric against it. Then there is the chair of the wheat board directors stirring up fear about dual marketing. What is interesting of note is that there has been no mention of trade retaliation by the WTO on dual marketing if the monopoly is lifted, even by the chair of the CWB board of directors. I'm starting to think he's full of it, the CWB has the port of Churchill and the railway line leading up to it, pretty much under their control, if the CWB didn't use Churchill the line and port are history. But then again the CWB is selling almost a million tonnes of grain to Iran for 333/tonne. Meanwhile grain around the world is fetching a higher price. Cripes no wonder that chair is worried about a dual market, if they market grain like that they will go out of business. Here's the prices link Wheat at the Minneapolis grain exchange is going for 10

That can be another broken promise for all we know as well.

It's not beneficial, if one side is doing it and one side isn't. That's called getting caught with your pants down and a good way to get forced out of business. How does it benefit me when a producer from France can get X amt. of dollars an acre and flood the market? The big subsidies still exist but aren't much of an issue anymore. The only thing that has really happened was a few tariffs got removed or lowered in Asia.

It's to Eastern Canada's short term benefit we didn't get into the subsidy war. They get cheap food produced at below cost and didn't have to pay for the cost of production. Why bother getting into a subsidy war if you don't have to? We'll have to see what the tories cook up with as far as that is concerned. Maybe it will end up working maybe it won't, that's the chance that they are going to have to take.

Subsidized grain is cheap food policy, Canada didn't get caught in the middle; some people benefitted from that. The ag war is basically over now. Madmax has pointed out that a farmer in Ontario got 6 bucks for wheat in 2004. If I was able to get 6 bucks then, I'd have my bins empty in two days. They would have been able to do better in the 90's due to the trucking runs that were attempted to the U.S. The benefit of the wheat board is accountability and that comes at a price. That is why I think provincial marketing boards and the CWB is gutted to a figurehead would come to be, there is still significant support left for that type of marketing, it is around 50-50 according to the Western Producer. Accountability is a nice luxury when grain prices were in the tank, that is why the board enjoyed support in the 90's and is a hot debate topic in ag circles. Look at it this way, a country is paying X dollars for a boat load of grain, I can sell it through the provincial marketing board which is a non profit organizatin for X-Y dollars, and have the accountability of the profits going back to farmers, or I can go to an elevator and get a little bit better price and the elevator makes a killing off me, or I can try and sell it on Ebay and have a shipping nightmare. I'd go with the marketing board, and so would half the other producers out there. If the elevator company offered a significantly better price than the board, I'd go with the elevator. The board holding such a large quantity of grain is too big a whale for the elevator companies to pass up, 25% of grain produced is a large quantity and the elevators would compete fiercely for it.

Just imagine a role reversal, if the Liberals were in power and they had an incompetant minister like Bernier around causing problems and it potentially cost them the next election, I'm pretty sure you'd be wanting the PM to be running a tight ship.

Sounds like the OWB is conducting bad business then. Controlling 18% of the market share, they should have an easier time securing contracts over a single farmer who has a fraction of a percent of the market share. I can assure you in 2004, I was not getting 6.77 a bushell for my #1 CWRS with 15% protein. I'd be lucky to get 4 due to CWB overhead. The farmer from Ontario is doing better. It's also of note that HRS is no where near in the same ball park as #1 CWRS, the OWB admits that.

What I was suggesting is an entirely possible hypothetical situation. Just because it is a possibility doesn't mean it will happen. The cake and eat it too has been the cheap food policy of Canada for the past 30 years. The left has been just as guilty. Im speculating that the board might not even market grain in the first place. I think it would keep its name and just be a regulatory body of provincial marketing boards. Setting policy is not marketing. A lot of CWB jobs would be lost though due to the massive restructuring in order to conform to the WTO rules. So in a sense you are correct that it would cease to exist in it's present form, but for political reasons the name would remain.

Yes people are prepared to break the law because they can get away with it, that's one of the pillars behind crime occuring in the first place. I think it is a possibility that's what could happen, most farmers want dual marketing, and as you pointed out this "solution" might be the only way to pull it off. I'm saying the CWB might not be a state trading enterprise in the first place. It would turn into the "Queen of England" powerwise so to speak. It's existence would be entirely political and powerless, with the "board power" in marketing boards and the open market.

I have no problem with Harper running a tight ship in cabinet, he gets lots done with minor bumps along the way, and if somebody screws up they're toast. That to me is an accountable and efficient gov't. As far as fortier and Emerson, the way Harper runs things he can put anyone in their jobs and pull their strings, not that that's a bad thing, work gets done, done fast and done well.

As proven by Coach Cartman those food price rises in Canada are negligible. Growing a crop regardless of its use creates some emissions. With ethanol, that's keeping x amt. of oil in the ground, now with burning DDG's in coal plants, that keeps coal in the ground, and cellulosic ethanol from the stem, keeps more oil in the ground. I'd say that reduces emissions if there even was a problem. Than the other people can pay money to cover the cost of growing it. It's not crude it's economics, producing food at a loss is unsustainable. If that one person wants a secure food supply, there is a price that has to be paid. Growing food is not cheap, The Europeans and Americans realize that and subsidize to ensure a steady flow of grain. Canada tried to cheap out, and it turned into a disaster, Canada has fixed this problem by making sure it does not over produce grain. With rock bottom prices in the past years, that one person went without food, the other person went without a tank of gas, because that land was idle. By creating a price floor, it is ensuring that agriculture is profitable so there is enough grain for both the gas tank and the person. It also lets developing countries boost ag output instead of being dumped with subsidized grain putting their farmers out of business.

That situation would be next to impossible to prove in court. A person can sell grain and barley without the board to livestock producers. The livestock producers can do whatever they like with the grain. Your last point touches on another issue. The tories are pressing very hard to keep those marketing boards at the WTO talks, which is surprising in your case. I'm now starting to believe that the tories will turn the CWB into some puppet organization with provincial marketing boards filling in the voids like you suggested. Of course that is pure speculation. The farmers will get their marketing choice with the provincial boards/open markets. The CWB still exists, but in a new role like various federal departments setting national standards, like the CRTC. I can't see that being too bad.

200 dollar oil means the world economy is booming and means good time charlie for Canada. A recession if it did happen, would drop oil and we'd start the same song and dance again.

Long term there will be a price fall off without ethanol. More land will be sown and with developing countries getting richer they can also afford to use modern farming practices. Ethanol cools off gas prices and creates a price floor. That food was overproduced waste. It was being grown at a loss. It was either quit growing or find another use for it. There was going to be less product around anyway, the costs to grow crops have to be paid. There is end in sight. In the U.S. the ethanol plants are scaling back production due to the high cost of corn (because of flooding) Even at 135 dollar oil, 8 dollar a bushell corn is not feasible for ethanol production and goes into food instead; likewise if there was record corn production spawned from 8 dollar corn, dropping corn prices (around say 3-6 dollars a bushell) with 135 dollar oil, the excess overproduced corn goes into ethanol production. Thanks to the stats provided by Coach Cartman, even with 1/3 of the U.S. crop going to ethanol, food prices are still affordable in North America. It's still more profitable to make food with high priced commodities than ethanol and not put the consumer in the poor house.