Harper falls in line behind U.S. interests (Frances Russell)
Wed Sep 6 2006 Winnipeg Free Press
PRIME Minister Stephen Harper is moving at warp speed to integrate Canada’s security, defence and foreign policies with the U.S. and shred our competitive advantage over the U.S. in lumber and wheat.
Days before Ottawa bludgeoned Canada’s lumber industry into the deeply flawed softwood lumber agreement, The Vancouver Sun published the details of a “leaked” letter from the Bush administration to the U.S. lumber lobby. In it, the American administration confirmed that its objective was to hobble the Canadian industry for seven years. Nor does it end there.
Fully $450 million of the $1.3 billion in illegal duties the Americans will get to keep will grease re-election wheels for protectionist Republicans facing tough fights in upcoming midterm congressional elections. Canada’s timber industry will thus be forced to subsidize an ongoing, illicit, attack on itself. All with the explicit consent of the Canadian government.
There is more. When the industry balked, the Harper government used intimidation — a now-familiar tactic of our new prime minister. On Aug. 4, The Globe and Mail quoted a senior government official warning that opponents “… should prepare themselves for the consequences of rejecting it and might want to start contemplating a world where Ottawa is no longer in the business of subsidizing softwood disputes.”
The softwood deal is trade managed of, by and for the American lumber lobby. A supposedly sovereign nation signed on to an unprecedented clause requiring provinces to first vet any changes in forestry policy with Washington.
Ignored in all the hype about “how thankful we should be that Conservatives get along so well with Americans” is this reality. Canada tossed away a significant victory, won, not before the useless North American Free Trade Agreement panels, but from the U.S. Court of International Trade. On April 7, it ruled U.S. duties on Canadian softwood were illegal. Click here to find out more! This is the second time a Conservative government has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on the lumber file. In 1986, the GATT, the World Trade Organization’s predecessor, issued a preliminary finding on the legality of U.S. lumber duties against Canada. Brian Mulroney’s government, bent on negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S., abruptly aborted it, with the eager acquiescence of the Americans. The finding was never published. It doesn’t take a suspicious mind to assume that GATT had ruled for Canada. Mulroney foreclosed on the GATT ruling because it would have wiped out his entire argument about the “necessity” of a bilateral free trade deal.
Free trade is like a computer virus, coursing through Canada’s social, economic and political systems, eradicating everything unique.
The first agricultural casualty was the prairie wheat pools. They corporatized, hoping to surf on the private American market. Instead, they surfed on losses and put the Canadian Wheat Board on a timeline. The Americans began gunning for it before the ink was even dry on their signature to the initial FTA in 1989.
Since then, the wheat board has been subjected to 11 separate U.S. trade attacks. The cry, as with lumber, has been unfair subsidies. The U.S. doesn’t just want to eliminate a formidable competitor on the world wheat market for its multinational agribusiness. It wants that agribusiness to capture the price advantage enjoyed by superior Canadian wheat.
Despite polls showing 73 per cent of western wheat farmers support the board, the Harper government is, as in lumber, preparing to do the Americans’ dirty work. It has begun the process to abolish the board’s monopoly. All that is stopping it is the fact it lacks a majority and couldn’t amend the current CWB Act. It requires a farmer plebiscite for any changes to the board’s status.
Terry Pugh, spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union, says a dual market kills the CWB because its monopoly seller position is precisely what earns farmers premium prices in global markets. The CWB’s demise wouldn’t just affect farmers but also have a ripple effect across the Canadian economy, closing the Port of Churchill, seriously impacting Thunder Bay and even the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, he continues. Canadian grain would go south, be mixed with American grain and shipped through American ports. Canadian wheat, as a distinct commodity, would disappear.
John Morriss, editor and publisher of the Farmers’ Independent Weekly, says a dual market is a chimera. He asks farmers to recall the voluntary Central Selling Agency run by the pools in the 1920s and the voluntary CWB which began in 1935. Both had spectacular bankruptcies, likely the two biggest business failures in Canadian history. The voluntary CWB lost $62 million in 1938-39 — an enormous sum at that time.
The reason a dual market won’t work is obvious, Morriss continues. “If the open market is higher than the initial payment, the board gets few deliveries. If the initial payment is higher than the market, it gets the deliveries but has to sell at a loss.” It’s said the beaver bites off its testicles when threatened. If true, the beaver is certainly an apt symbol, if not for Canada, certainly for a succession of governments which, when faced with ceaseless bullying, react by carving off pieces of the nation.
francesrussell@mts.net
Comment by Harper Falls in Line Behind U.S. Interests (Frances Russell) « Unminds Must Fear, writing from on March 10th, 2007 at 8:38 pm:
[…] 11th, 2007 · No Comments The beaver is certainly an apt symbol, if not for Canada, certainly for a succession ofgovernments which, when faced with ceaseless bullying, react by carving off pieces of the nation. read more […]
Comment by Dick French, writing from United States on March 11th, 2007 at 10:08 pm:
As a professional righter I found your article enlightening, particularly as it relates to the North American Union and the global fraud being perpetuated on the citizens of both Canada and the US by the Internationalists at all levels.
Comment by Rocky Thompson, writing from Canada on October 20th, 2007 at 11:52 pm:
“The voluntary CWB lost $62 million in 1938/39- an enormous sum at the time.”
Yes it was, but it was no where near the $1.08 per bushel that the compulsory CWB lost on 320,000,000 bushels of wheat under the terms of the British Wheat Agreement of 1946.
The CWB sold the wheat for $1.08/bu LESS than what they could have sold it for to other countries.
That was $345 million (or about $5 billion in todays money) that the CWB lost and never repaid western farmers for.
So why didn’t John Morriss ask farmers to remember that fact instead of the measely $62 million?
Or didn’t he know about it?
Why don’t you ask the CWB for these facts John Morriss?
You think they are honest, they should tell about that 1946 BWA loss.
I wonder why this stupendous loss, of historical proportions, is never mentioned in the CWB history website, or the history books in Saskatchewan or Manitoba or Canada?
A convenient loss of memory, some misplaced/destroyed papers, or maybe the crooked CWB has been hiding these real facts for all these years?
The CWB is fighting hard to keep its monopoly simply to keep farmers from seeing the real accounting and the horrendous job of marketing our grain all these years that it has done.
The CWB has fattened the bottonlines of more family corporations in central Canada than it ever did for western farmers.
You really have to be deaf, blind or stupid to think that the present CWB, which has degenerated into a political mouthpiece of the Crooked Liberal Party du Canada, is acting in the best interests of the western grain farmers.
CD Howe set the compulsory CWB up in 1943 to screw farmers and it still does to this day.
That’s why the compulsory CWB for wheat and barley is finished anyway, no matter how much some people cry about it.
Rocky Thompson