Dear Editor:
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers (WCWG) appear to belong to the Ostrich family. They continually hide their heads in the sand and only “appear” when Ottawa needs a “relevant” farm group to lobby against the majority of producers!
The WCWG record of supporting policies detrimental to farmers is astounding! They supported the demise of the Crow Rate and soon after they collapsed for lack of membership. But industry revived them so they could go on working against farmers. They opposed the Farmer Rail Car Coalition managing the Federally owned grain hopper car fleet even though this would have saved farmers millions in inflated railway company costs for maintenance. Thanks to the WCWG the railways now control the hopper fleet we all paid for and farmers must pay more for access. The WCWG promoted destroying the CWB and its single desk which has left farmers in a logistics nightmare costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Now we have little to no transparency in prices and the grain companies are taking excess profits in the hundreds of millions from farmers. Destruction of the CWB has also taken away any significant producer control and input into their own commercial industry.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper crowed about the destruction of the CWB and the resulting economic growth that would occur, like the phantom Regina pasta plant which has not yet appeared. In fact, the Harper government has now given money to an existing pasta plant in the east! It was no surprise that during the Federal election the WCWG were in Regina dancing like puppets to support the fallacy of a pasta plant being built there.
It’s not too late for the WCWG to align themselves with producers, lose their connection to the corporate world, and wean themselves from Federal Agriculture grants. They could join the majority of farmers that support farmers having some control of their own industry like they did with the single desk CWB. If the WCWG continue to support the middle men, who steal from farmers, then the WCWG’s fate, as well as that of the Tory government will be sealed and they will be gone after the next Federal election.
Eric Sagan
Melville, SK.
