This past Friday, October 28th people streamed in from all directions, awaiting the arrival of the farm trucks and tractors at Portage and Main. The sidewalk in front of our Canadian Wheat Board filled with farmers, urbanites, union members, Occupy Winnipeg, politicians – sometimes unlikely associates but on this occasion willingly pressed close together in the crowd.
“When farmers protest, and speak out,” said one young man as his father stepped onto the stage, “You know there’s something very wrong. This does not come easily to farmers.”
The message was clear: Save our Canadian Wheat Board. The CWB belongs to the farmers, and the farmers voted to keep it.
Louise May and Maude Barlow drive a tractor trough the corner of Portage and Main
Without the wheat board, farmers will negotiate directly with huge grain corporations – corporations who have been trying for 25 years to get rid of the CWB. Andrew Paterson of Paterson Grain (a subsidiary of Paterson GlobalFoods Inc) says he expects to do better business when the CWB is gone. He can say that because he knows that the grain companies can afford to outwait farmers as prices fluctuate; can afford to wait until farmers have to sell for whatever they can get. The half a billion dollars a year that the CWB puts back in farmers’ pockets for next year’s crop will go instead to four or five private grain companies like Paterson and Archer Daniels Midland. The grain that passes through the farmer-owned wheat board on its way to markets around the world will be purchased and owned by those same private companies before being resold for the corporations’ own profit. Canadian food security is at risk as much as farmers’ livelihoods.
There is nothing to show that farmers would be better off without the CWB, as over 20,000 farmers testified when they said “Yes!” to keeping the Canadian Wheat Board .The CWB has brand name recognition and respect from around the world and the earned trust of farmers as a strong representative of Canadian grain. Since the farmers’ cooperative wheat pools of the 1920s, and the formalization of the Canadian Wheat Board in 1935, the CWB’s sole purpose has been to give farmers a fair share in the marketplace. “Farmers pay for the wheat board, farmers run the wheat board and only farmers have the right to decide the future of the wheat board.” said Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians.
This is not only about the wheat board: this is about democracy, and the enormous amounts of power and money invested in breaking down our democratic rights. With the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement nearing completion, all supply management is on the table. “The CWB is a concession to the EU to show good faith in bargaining.” (Maude Barlow) It’s a testing ground to find out how much the people of Canada will tolerate – and the people of Canada must stand firm against the drive to privatization and corporate takeover.
Fred Tait, Manitoba Coordinator of the National Farmers Union, spoke for all of us when he said, “Democracy now is what we want – we do not need the freedom to choose which corporation will exploit us.”
Contributor: Mary Robinson- Council of Canadians Winnipeg Chapter Member