Dear Editor:
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association (WCWGA) appears to be trying to make their claim as a farm group by having their Annual Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. More likely a tax deduction holiday than anything else!
One has to wonder why this one trick, kill the Canadian Wheat Board, group needs to exist anymore. The single desk CWB is gone, aided by the corporate donations to the WCWGA and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of ”research money” the previous federal government gave them!
Take a look at this link to see just one such Ritz grant: http://tinyurl.com/l5jn3lz.
Thanks to Ritz and this group, farmers now get to face the grain trade head on individually and without the market research the CWB used to provide. Farmers now have the “freedom” to deal with middle men who now gleefully take what we used to get through the single-desk while the grain companies provide no price transparency.
Producers have lost billions of dollars of revenue in the last few years due to the loss of the CWB and the excessive basis values the grain companies charged, and they will lose billions more this year as grain is sold in US dollars yet our rpice in Canadian dollars has not changed for the better. The hard assets we paid for like the hopper cars, the building in Winnipeg, the two Laker ships and farmers insight/control into the grain industry are all gone with the loss of the CWB.
With its membership the WCWGA should be able to have a Annual General Meeting around a kitchen table! It’s a National disgrace anyone can call the one trick WCWGA a farm group. Their sole purpose, when they were not working for the railroads, was to destroy the farmer controlled CWB and replace it with nothing!! Their corporate party in New Orleans is a slap in the face to all Western Canadian Farmers not to mention the taxpayers of Canada who I will bet are footing most of the bill!
Eric Sagan
Melville, SK.
