PUBLICATION:
The Calgary Sun --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is David Herle, Liberal party campaign boss, permitted to sit in on confidential directors meetings of the Canadian Wheat Board? Probably for the same reason the Wheat Board hired Liberal cabinet minister Reg Alcock's former campaign manager, Avis Gray. Same reason the Wheat Board has put Global Public Affairs, a Liberal-stacked lobby firm, on its payroll, too. In other words, it's the culture of Liberal entitlement, where the Liberal party treats public institutions as if they're assets of the Liberal party. Public money becomes Liberal money. Wheat Board confidentiality -- they are such a secretive organization, they are exempt from federal access to information laws -- is waived when it comes to a top Liberal operative like Herle. And the Wheat Board continues its slow-burn war on Conservative-voting farmers. Scratch that: It's not a war on farmers. It's a war on western farmers. The Wheat Board doesn't rule over farmers east of Manitoba. Just the colonies out here in the West. Western farmers who dared sell their own wheat have spent long months in jail -- longer than if they had sold marijuana, or committed a robbery. That sort of treatment for a good, Liberal-voting Ontario or Quebec farmer is unthinkable. David Anderson, the
Conservative MP for Cypress Hills-Grasslands, has complained about this
Liberal infiltration of the Wheat Board. But he emphasizes the lavish
spending of the Wheat Board, contrasting that with the tough times experienced
by farmers. The West was born unequal. When Alberta and Saskatchewan joined Confederation, they were not granted the rights to natural resources other provinces had. That led to Ottawa's covetous approach to the West's resources. But that same attitude towards the West -- that we are merely hewers of wood and drawers of water -- still applies to agriculture, and the Wheat Board is the instrument of that subservience. There is hope on the horizon, though. Not from Ottawa, of course -- they would never willingly loosen their grip on the West, or give up such a partisan slush fund. The hope is from a far away city called Doha, in Qatar. There, at the meeting of the World Trade Organization, the U.S. and the European Union are demanding the Wheat Board stop its interference in agriculture, in return for a reduction in their interference, too. The world's financial markets take the U.S./EU threat seriously; last week Standard and Poor's lowered its rating of the Wheat Board from "stable" to "negative" based on their assessment the government will be forced to change how the Wheat Board works. But farmers shouldn't rejoice yet. Word out of Ottawa is that any changes to the Wheat Board will maintain Ottawa's iron grip on farmers but would simply stop subsidizing the Wheat Board itself. So all of the monopoly control and all of the lavish, partisan spending would continue -- except Ottawa's subsidies to the Wheat Board would simply be replaced by putting even more weight on the backs of western farmers. Don't worry, though. David Herle and Avis Gray will be OK. |