KURTENBACH: Grain Shipments

[Oscar]

KURTENBACH: Grain Shipments

March 20, 2014 10:00 AM

To the Editor,

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and some of his colleagues often state that Canada's economy is their first concern. However, people are rightfully entitled to wonder which sector of the economy gets most of their support: Is it the oil industry or agriculture?

Federal and provincial governments must certainly be aware of the bumper crop harvested on the prairies in 2013. Grain bins of prairie producers and grain terminals are filled to capacity. That grain needs to be loaded onto rail line grain cars and moved to ports where ships are waiting to be loaded. The producers can then move grain from their farms and get paid for it. There is a high cost for ships waiting in port. It is called demurrage. That cost will be deducted from the grain that the farmer sells. Many producers need money now to meet the costs of putting in the crop this spring.

Obviously, federal and provincial governments must consider that oil is the most important to the economy. It seems that no concern has been shown that thousands of oil tankers are moving on the rail lines, but very few grain cars are moving grain to export position.

Grain producers and their organizations were beginning to express alarm that grain was not being moved. An Opposition member in the House of Commons suggested that the Minister of Agriculture was "asleep at the switch".

Not so.

Ignoring grain movement simply followed Harper's dutiful, ritzy Minister of Agriculture in eliminating the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and the democratically-elected producers who were on the Executive of the CWB. This leaves producers at the mercy of the global grain traders and the oil industry.

It is well known that the number of farm families living on the land is steadily decreasing. Our present government possibly reasons that losing the vote of prairie farm families is no big deal. But there is a federal election on the calendar for 2015. Canadian voters may well believe that giving preferential treatment to the oil industry is not being fair to prairie producers.

Leo Kurtenbach,
Saskatoon, SK
Phone: 306-256-3638