02) MY CANADA INCLUDES THE WHEAT BOARD

By Darrell Rankin

     More than two thousand wheat and barley farmers attended meetings across the prairies in August to discuss the fate of the Canadian Wheat Board.

     They came despite a threat by the Harper Conservatives to ignore the wishes of more than 68,000 farmers should they vote in a plebiscite to keep the CWB as a single‑desk, farmer‑run marketer.

     The CWB directors will announce the results of the plebiscite on September 9. Now the main issue is to maintain the momentum and to stall legislation to kill the CWB.

     The meetings were organized to give farmers a chance to hear from the elected directors and to express their views. Those attending were overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the CWB's single-desk mandate.

     "People around the world will shake their heads if the Harper government destroys the Wheat Board," said one farmer in Camrose, Alberta.

     Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz met with CWB chair Alan Oberg in May, revealing the Conservatives want to "take their political lumps" early in their mandate, well before the next election.

     This is a critical time to build a broad coalition of popular forces to defend the Wheat Board. If all the coalitions and trade unions that defend sovereignty and Medicare, the CBC and other important Canadian institutions together say "My Canada includes the Wheat Board," that will be a huge step in blocking the dictatorial Conservative plan.

     The effort should reach out to all groups that are largely self‑governing, including professional groups that defend the right to decide how their industry is governed, and in which farmers play a role, even the Canadian Legion.

     For the Conservative Party, this finishes its 19th century "National Dream" to colonize Western Canada and build a protected, agro‑industrial economy. Ending the CWB would be a monumental sellout to the giant, mainly U.S.‑owned corporations that dominate the global grain trade. It would also rid the Conservatives of a democratic group of farmers who could be part of the effort to build a more just society in Western Canada.

     Within the Conservative Party, the voice of farmers is gone, replaced by resource and energy corporate interests which see no value or importance in Canadian agriculture, including their prairie heartland. The millions here and abroad who depend on Canadian wheat have a different view.

(The above article is from the September 1-15, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)