In typical conservative fashion Lisa Raitt has announced fines to the rail industry if they do not increase the number of rail cars..... but that is not the problem
The real problem, as farmer Bill Gehl, chairperson of the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance, a group representing farmers who tried to save the board, said last November is that “without the farmer-controlled single-desk Wheat Board, nobody is coordinating grain sales, transportation logistics, and the efficient use of port terminal facilities.”
That, in turn means “port terminals are now competing with each other to use rail transport capacity just to generate grain handling revenue.
Read more: http://albertadiary.ca/tag/canadian-wheat-board-alliance
Remember the “market freedom” the Harper Government was congratulating itself so heartily for delivering to Western Canada’s grain farmers a few weeks ago?
To create that “freedom,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and the trained seals in the federal Tory caucus have all but killed the Canadian Wheat Board. Now the freedom they boast about is killing the prices farmers get for their grain and enriching railroads and multinational food corporations.
Gee, who’d have predicted that?
An editorial last Monday in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix quoted Vergreville-Wainwright Tory MP Leon Benoit complaining that wheat that sold a year ago for $9 a bushel is now fetching less than $4 for the farmers who grow it.
Indeed, right at the moment you could argue the price of wheat on the Prairies has for all intents and purposes fallen to zero, because privately owned inland terminals aren’t even accepting the stuff at the moment.
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