7 reasons city slickers should support the Canadian Wheat Board

Posted: November 11, 2011 in In Solidarity, Nibbling on The Empire
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I received this letter from the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board. I think it speaks for itself.

The Attack on the Canadian Wheat Board: Seven Reasons Non-Farmers Should Care … and Act

Some of the 400 people who rallied in front of the CWB headquarters, Oct. 28, 2011. Photo: Paul S. Graham

On October 18th, Prime Minister Harper introduced legislation, Bill C-18, to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board. The majority of farmers oppose the Prime Minister’s plan—farmers have repeatedly voted for a strong, effective CWB. Farmers are organizing and protesting. But to save our democratically controlled marketing agency, farm families need your help, and the help of the organizations with which you work.

The loss of the CWB will hurt every Canadian family. Here are seven reasons why non-farmer Canadian citizens should act to help protect the Wheat Board:

1. Privatization and Loss of Economic Control
Few sectors of the Canadian economy are 100% owned and controlled by Canadians. But one is: our multibillion-dollar western wheat and barley marketing system. If the Harper government destroys the CWB, it will turn over to transnational corporations (most of them foreign) a critical sector of our economy that is now owned and controlled by Canadian citizens. What C-18 takes away from farmers and other Canadians, it gives to grain giants such as Cargill.

2. Genetically Modified Food
In 2000, Monsanto moved to introduce genetically modified (GM) wheat. Farm organizations, environmental groups, and citizens’ organizations banded together to stop Monsanto and keep GM wheat out of Canadian fields and foods. United, we succeeded. The CWB was a crucial ally. Many people and organizations believe that had it not been for the work of the CWB, Canadians would now be eating food made from GM wheat. Lose the CWB and we may lose the fight to stop GM wheat.

3. Food Sovereignty
As an alternative to a globalized, long-distance, corporate-controlled food system, many Canadians are advocating Food Sovereignty, wherein farmers and all citizens collectively shape the food system we want for our families. The CWB is a good example of Food Sovereignty in action: a democratic agency controlled by food producers and citizens. By attacking the CWB, this government is pushing back hard against Food Sovereignty, serving notice that our future food system will be more far-flung, more corporate controlled. A government hostile to the CWB is hostile to Food Sovereignty.

4. National Sovereignty
Today, Canada has its own grain production, processing, handling, and transportation systems. Our Canadian Grain Commission sets and enforces quality standards—equal to the highest in the world. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulates new seed varieties, keeping harmful ones out and ensuring farmers have access to seeds that grow well in our climate.

Most of our grain flows “east-west”, hauled by Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways and loaded onto ships at Canadian ports by Canadian workers. If we destroy the CWB, other parts of our Canadian grain system will be destroyed in turn. As the government empowers US-based grain transnationals, those corporations will chafe against Canadian regulations and push for the destruction of our Grain Commission, seed regulations, and the rest of our quality and regulatory systems. Destroying the CWB accelerates the Americanization of our grain and food systems.

Worse, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Chapter 11 gives US-based grain companies a veto over future attempts to rebuild our CWB. If we destroy it, we can’t get it back.

5. Your Economy
The CWB is the cornerstone of our Canadian wheat and barley marketing, handling, and transport systems. Those systems create jobs:

  • in Winnipeg where the CWB, the Grain Commission, the Canadian International Grains Institute, and other agencies are headquartered;
  • in Thunder Bay, Ontario; Churchill, Manitoba; Vancouver, B.C.; and Montreal, Quebec; where Canadian export grain is cleaned, blended, and loaded onto ships; and
  • across Canada as money is retained in this country and spent in rural and urban centres.

The CWB raises farmers’ revenues by $500+ million annually, money largely from foreign nations that is spent in urban and rural businesses across Canada. PriceWaterhouseCoopers calculated the CWB’s total benefit to the Canadian economy at more than $850 million annually. Without the CWB, citizens and communities across the nation will suffer financially.

6. Our Democracy
The vast majority of farmers want a strong, effective CWB. Farmers have reaffirmed that support in 10 votes—3 plebiscites and 7 sets of Directors Elections. Despite this, the Harper government is pushing forward to destroy the CWB. And it is doing so illegally.

Section 47.1 of the CWB Act requires that farmers must vote in favour of major changes to the CWB. The government is ignoring that law and refusing to hold a vote. Also, the government is ramming its legislation through parliament, using closure to limit debate, refusing to let the Agriculture Committee examine the bill, and instead setting up an ad hoc committee to review the bill, but limiting that committee to just 5 minutes per section. Prime Minister Harper has announced he will “walk over” the farmer majority that support the CWB, and he has called his drive to dismantle the CWB a “train barrelling down a Prairie track.” Our federal government is sneering at democracy, evading due process, and bending the law to the breaking point. If these antidemocratic tactics are not challenged, they will be repeated.

7. Farms and the Land
The CWB raises farmers’ prices and incomes. And the CWB provides equitable access to the market for all farmers, big or small. Losing the CWB will accelerate the loss of family farms. In so doing, it will concentrate farmland ownership in fewer and fewer hands. A blow to the CWB is a blow to family-farm agriculture, and the men and women who produce our food.

You can help protect our food supply, sovereignty, economy, and democracy

Time is short. We need to act fast. But action takes just 15 or 20 minutes. What is needed right now is for Canadians to write two short letters:

  • One to Prime Minister Harper, asking him to scrap Bill C-18, his destroy-the-CWB legislation, and to instead enact policies that foster Food Sovereignty and a strong Canadian nation and economy; and
  • One letter to Canadian Senators, asking them to resist pressure to fast-track Bill C-18, and to instead give careful and adequate consideration to this detailed and far-reaching legislation; to hold meetings of their Agriculture Committee; and to hear presentations from farmers, workers, businesspeople, and other Canadians who will be affected by this legislation.

Contact information for the Prime Minister
Hon. Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
FAX: (613) 941-6900
Email: stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca

Contact information for Senators
Canadian Senators
c/o the Clerk of the Senate
Parliament Building
Ottawa, Ontario

I also think it would be worth it to contact your Member of Parliament. Here are some useful links and a video to round out your resource kit. Don’t delay.

Bill C-10: Time Does Not Stop Crime

Posted: November 9, 2011 in Aboriginal Peoples, Neo-Con Myths, Winnipeg
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Nov. 8, 2011: 300 Winnipeggers demonstrated at the Manitoba Legislature and the Winnipeg Remand Centre to urge the Manitoba Government to join Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador in opposing the Harper government’s omnibus crime bill, misleadingly titled the Safe Streets and Communities Act (aka Bill C-10). Their key message, “time does not stop crime” rebutted the government’s contention that locking up more offenders for longer periods was an effective crime prevention technique.

As I noted in an earlier post, the John Howard Society of Manitoba estimates Canadians will pay $2 billion annually to cover the costs of the bill, which calls for mandatory minimum sentences for a wide range of crimes regardless of individual circumstances. While this will trigger a huge increase in the number of inmates and a prison construction boom, it will do nothing to address the root causes of crime, nor will it lead to the rehabilitation of offenders.

Speakers:

  • John Hutton, Executive Director, John Howard Society of Manitoba
  • Shaun Loney – Executive Director,  BUILD
  • Cora Morgan, Executive Director, Onashowewin
  • Tracy Booth, Executive Director, Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba
  • Jacquie Nicholson, Literacy Coordinator, John Howard Society of Manitoba
  • Alex Paterson, Occupy Winnipeg

The protest was sponsored by:

  • BUILD Winnipeg
  • Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • Canadian Federation of Students
  • Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba
  • Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba
  • Initiatives for Just Communities
  • Occupy Winnipeg
  • Ogijiita Pimatiswin Kinamatwin (OPK)
  • Mennonite Central Committee of Manitoba
  • School of Social Work, Université de Saint-Boniface
  • Social Planning Council of Winnipeg
  • Southern Chiefs Organization
  • William (Bill) VanderGraff, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

For more information about C-10, contact the John Howard Society of Manitoba. And let your MP know what you think.

See also:

Kill the Tory Crime Bill

Posted: November 9, 2011 in Neo-Con Myths, Winnipeg
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Nov. 8, 2011: Some of the 300 people who demonstrated in front of the Winnipeg Remand Centre in opposition to the Conservative Government's Omnibus Crime Bill, C-10. Photo: Paul Graham

The John Howard Society of Manitoba estimates Canadians will pay $2 billion annually to cover the costs of Stephen Harper’s omnibus crime bill. Bill C-10, which calls for mandatory minimum sentences for a wide range of crimes regardless of individual circumstances, will trigger a huge increase in the number of inmates and a requirement to build new prisons. It will do nothing to address the root causes of crime, nor will it lead to the rehabilitation of offenders.

Given the onerous cost, most of which will be borne by the provinces, it’s not surprising that the provincial governments of Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland & Labrador have spoken out against the bill. In Winnipeg, the John Howard Society and 13 other agencies held a rally, Nov. 8, to tell the government of Manitoba to do likewise.

I recorded the event and will be producing a program for WCTV in the near future. But in the meantime, here’s a short interview with the executive director of the John Howard Society of Manitoba, John Hutton, in which he outlines some of the major problems with the legislation.

Video: Winnipeg Save the Canadian Wheat Board Rally

Posted: October 30, 2011 in In Solidarity, Nibbling on The Empire, Winnipeg
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Against the wishes of most western farmers, and in defiance of laws that they are sworn to uphold, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are poised to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board. In truly Orwellian fashion, the Tories describe this as “democracy,” all the while invoking closure on Parliamentary debate and refusing to hold the farmers’ plebiscite that is required by federal law before any such major change can be made to the status of the CWB.

The CWB has been a bone of contention in farm policy circles for decades. While a loud minority of western grain producers have been clamoring for an end to the CWB monopoly on wheat and barley exports, most farmers continue to support the Board, as evidenced by several CWB Board of Directors election results and a recent CWB-sponsored plebiscite. The reason for the Board’s enduring support is that it works for farmers, as opposed to private grain companies who exist to maximize profits for their shareholders.

Urban Canadians have yet to wake up to this issue, though this is starting to happen. The Council of Canadians is prominent in the coalition of organizations leading the fightback. What we city slickers need to get our heads around is that this is, first and foremost, a battle for democracy. It is a struggle against growing corporate control of our food and the relentless corporatization of agriculture that is destroying rural communities.

One one level, the issues are complex. You can get a crash course by watching the video I produced along with my WCTV colleague Ken Harasym. Follow that up with visits to the web sites listed below and you will be well on your way.

On another level, it is very simple: like us, farmers are part of the 99%. We gotta stick together. Occupy that, Stephen Harper!

Links

Video: Four Directions Walk to End Poverty

Posted: October 24, 2011 in Aboriginal Peoples, Act Locally, Human Rights, Winnipeg
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Despite its well established habit of electing social democratic governments, Winnipeg has claimed some dubious honors — “Murder Capital of Canada” and “Child Poverty Capital of Canada” to name two of the most disturbing. Even though we have had 11 years of NDP government to undo the damage of Gary Filmon’s Conservatives, both poverty and crime are well entrenched in Manitoba, especially in Winnipeg.

According to the 2011 Child and Family Poverty Report Card, issued by the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg:

  • 92,650 children in Manitoba live in families under the poverty threshold
  • 29,000 children in Manitoba live in families with annual incomes insufficient for meeting basic needs
  • 29,563 Manitoban children use food banks each month because their families cannot afford to purchase the necessary food they require
  • 59,734 Manitobans accessed Employment and Income Assistance
  • The richest 20% of Manitoban families have more total income than the poorest 60% of the population

The Council says these statistics have not changed significantly since 1989, the year the House of Commons pledged to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000.

What is to be done? According to the Manitoba Green Party, 80 per cent of all expenditures on social assistance programs are consumed by government bureaucracy. They proposed, in the last provincial election, to replace welfare benefits with a Universal Basic Income benefit, payable to all Manitobans, that would ensure no one slipped below the poverty line. The idea has merit and I hope the Greens continue to explain and promote it.

Yet another group of Manitobans proposes a package of measures they call a “Justice Charter to End Poverty in Manitoba.” I’ve included it at the end of this piece.

They also hold an annual event called the Four Directions Walk to End Poverty in which four contingents begin their walk on the outskirts of town and converge on the Manitoba Legislature. They held their fourth such walk on Saturday, Oct. 22. Naturally, I brought my video camera.

Justice Charter to End Poverty in Manitoba

We the people of Manitoba, seeing the growing gap between the wealthy and people in need, the working poor, and discriminated groups want to act in a timely manner to reverse the situation, to provide for people with needs and support the right for everyone to contribute to society to the best of their ability. To this end we make these demands and will work to make them a reality:

Housing must be a right and a comfort, not a constant crisis!

  • End subsidies to private landlords.
  • Establish stricter rent controls.
  • Enact a Tenant Bill of Rights.
  • Build and maintain public housing to the standard building code.
  • No utility cut-offs; establish a panel with legal power to require landlords to pay.

Universal health care for all, for every need!

  • Expand medicare into a comprehensive health care system focusing on prevention.
  • Extend medicare to cover all essential needs such as eye, drug, dental, ambulance and prosthetics.
  • Reduce pollution from mining and manufacturing, especially next to low income neighborhoods.


Jobs are a human right. Create good-paying jobs for all!

  • Create jobs through a massive investment in public housing, a public child care program, and conversion to a “green” economy.
  • Increase the minimum wage to $14 an hour.
  • Quality job creation by ensuring access to education, ending tuition fees, free student housing, education in Aboriginal and any other language where numbers warrant.
  • Access to better jobs – reduce the work week with no loss in pay, add paid vacation days and reduce the pension age for women to age 60.
  • End the Foreign Temporary Worker program, give these workers full labour rights and make them immigrants to Canada, if they so choose.

Provide for those in need!

  • Introduce a Guaranteed Liveable Income, above the poverty line and indexed to inflation.
  • Improve special needs benefits and introduce a fast appeals process with free advocacy services.
  • A public, high quality, free child care program employing well-paid early childhood development professionals.
  • Establish a hot breakfast program for children in schools.
  • For injured workers, establish a fast and free appeals process independent of the Workers Compensation Board. Provide free legal services and always respect the right to appeal.
  • Establish a Manitoba pension credit plan funded by payroll deductions, a surtax on corporate income to top up pensions above the poverty line and an inheritance wealth tax.
  • Establish a federally-chartered, publicly-owned bank that does not discriminate against people in poverty, is located in low-income areas, and provides free or nonprofit cheque cashing services and international fund transmittals.
  • Establish a province-wide, free and publicly-owned handi-transit service for people with disabilities.
  • Establish price controls for essential foods throughout Manitoba.

End racism, sexism and discrimination of all forms!

  • Support immediate settlement of Aboriginal land claims and emergency action to end housing, health care and education inequality.
  • Take steps to recognize Aboriginal nations on a new basis in Canada, including full national rights and equal nation to nation relations.
  • Introduce immediately affirmative action hiring with mandatory quotas for Aboriginal people, people of colour, women and people with disabilities in both the public and private sector.
  • Job pay equity for all workplaces.
  • Replace the present legal system of retribution and punishment with principles of restorative justice – restitution and reconciliation; include “ability to pay” as a consideration for sentencing people to jail for nonpayment of fines.
  • Ban discrimination based on social or mental health conditions in the Human Rights Code.
  • Introduce a Manitoba Bill of Rights based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), adding protections against all forms of sexism.

Reform the democratic system

  • Establish proportional representation so that people will vote for what they want and so that every person’s vote will count.
  • Pay Legislators the average worker’s wage and benefits in Manitoba.

The Justice Charter is for discussion by all Manitobans. The annual Four Directions Walk is Winnipeg’s largest annual anti-poverty activity. It is organized to encourage discussion of the ideas in this Charter. We invite groups representing Aboriginal peoples, women, workers, youth and students, people of colour, people with disabilities, injured workers, the working poor, people living in poverty, people of all faiths and nonbelievers – all supportive groups:

  • To establish a Four Directions Walk in other Manitoba communities.
  • To discuss the Charter and send us your ideas.

Contact us if you would like to receive information on the annual Walk, held on a Saturday close to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (October 17).

Four Directions Walk Committee
Email: fourdirectionswalk@changetheworldmb.ca
Phone (204) 792-3371.

Arrest George Bush

Posted: October 19, 2011 in Human Rights, Nibbling on The Empire
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On Thursday, George W. Bush and former U.S. president Bill Clinton (himself an accomplished war criminal) will be attending the Surrey Regional Economic Summit at the Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel. Here’s some information from the Canadian Peace Alliance on what you can do to support Bush’s arrest for war crimes.

» Report George W. Bush as a person likely to try to enter Canada contrary to section 35 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The Canadian Border Service Agency runs a Border Watch Toll-free line. Their website advertises:
“If you have information about suspicious cross-border activity, please contact the Canada Border Services Agency Border Watch Toll-free Line at 1-888-502-9060.”

George Walker Bush, born July 6, 1945 is likely to try to cross the border into Canada on or about October 18 to 20th 2011 to attend an event in Surrey British Columbia.  Mr. Bush has admitted to authorizing and approving the widespread use of torture by the U.S. Armed Forces and the CIA.  There are reasonable grounds to believe that George W. Bush, as the President of the United States of America and Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces between 2001 and 2009, counselled, aided and abetted the commission of torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations. Experts estimate that in Iraq alone, over a million innocent men, women and children have died as a consequence of the illegal U.S.-led war on Iraq authorized and directed by George W. Bush.

N.B. the website indicates that CBSA has discretion to provide a reward for information.
http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/security-securite/bwl-lsf-eng.html

For more information about the case to charge Bush as a war criminal please see: Lawyers Against the War

» October 20: Peaceful Rally to Protest George W Bush’s Surrey Visit

Thursday, October 20, 11:00 am
Join at the parking lot outside the Bay, Guildford Mall, SW corner of 152 St. & 104 Ave.
For info on this rally, please email stopwar@resist.ca
http://stopwarca.wordpress.com/

» Sign the Online petition to arrest George Bush:
www.amnesty.ca

»Torture victims plan to file charges when Bush enters Canada
www.stopwar.wordpress.com

» Lawyers press for Bush arrest, as #Occupy activists set to converge in Surrey
Vancouver Observer

You can follow the events on twitter: @StopWarCa and #OccupySurrey #ArrestBush

Occupy Winnipeg Scrapbook II

Posted: October 17, 2011 in Aboriginal Peoples, Nibbling on The Empire, Winnipeg
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Oct. 15, 2011: Scenes from Occupy Winnipeg – and a reminder that what is now called Canada was occupied long before by the aboriginal peoples of this part of the world. It is time the descendants of the Europeans who took the land from the people who were here first do a much better job of sharing it with today’s First Nations.

Occupy Winnipeg Scrapbook

Posted: October 15, 2011 in Nibbling on The Empire
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Winnipeggers took to the streets October 15, 2011 as part of the international outcry against corporate greed that began with Occupy Wall Street. The Flaming Trolleys provided just the right musical foundation, and, as usual, I took my video camera along.

Video: Israeli privilege is unsustainable – Amira Hass

Posted: October 10, 2011 in Human Rights
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Sept. 30, 2011 - Award-winning Israeli journalist Amira Hass speaking at the University of Winnipeg on the need to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Photo: Paul S. Graham

“Inhuman, immoral and unsustainable” are the words used by Amira Hass to describe what she terms “the State of Israel and the privileges it endows to Jews only, at the expense of Palestinians.”

Hass was at the University of Winnipeg Sept. 30, to provide a unique perspective on the Palestinian struggle, that of an Israeli Jew, a woman and a journalist for Haaretz, who has lived and worked in either Gaza or the West Bank for the past 17 years.

Hass was forceful in her denunciation of the conditions under which Palestinians live and uncompromising about the need to end the occupation and restore the rights of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. What especially caught my attention, however, was her diplomatic yet unmistakable suggestion that activists outside of Israel take stock of their own societies and refrain from applying a double standard toward Israel.

“I’m fully aware that I’m speaking here mostly to the privileged. You are also a settler society that owes a large part of its affluence and comfortable life to the disenfranchisement of native peoples,” Hass said early in her presentation. She continued, “I also know that many who are engaged in the struggle for justice for Palestine are aware of it and probably some of you are part of the struggle to undo some of the damage that your communities, that your society, has inflicted on the First Nations.”

Hass returned briefly to this theme late in her presentation. While she expressed profound regret that she and other Israeli activists had not succeeded in convincing fellow citizens to end the suppression of Palestinians, she advised activists to get a sense of proportion.

“I would call for some sort of proportion. The calls about Israeli illegitimacy – I understand them – but I also want to understand why Israel is more illegitimate as a settler society – why is it more illegitimate than Canada. . . . let’s not treat Israel as the only evil in the world.”

If you look at the map Hass used in her presentation (click for a larger view) it would seem that the Israelis have borrowed the Canadian playbook – force the aboriginal peoples onto isolated parcels of land, compel them to live in poverty and control every aspect of their existence until they lose the will to resist. The main difference in this regard is that we’ve been doing this to “our” native peoples for a much longer time.

My take-away from Amira Hass’s presentation: stand up for Palestinian rights, but remember your responsibility for stand up for aboriginal rights in Canada.

Please share this video widely, especially with those who have imbibed deeply at the well of Israeli propaganda. For them, it could be an eye-opener.

Afghanistan: 32 years of Western-sponsored genocide

Posted: October 7, 2011 in Afghanistan
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As the world marks ten years of war in Afghanistan, it is instructive to remember, as Michel Chossudovsky has observed, that the war started long before, in 1979, when the United States sponsored an insurgency against the Afghan government. Chossudovsky calls it “genocide”; I think he’s understating the situation.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter, known these days for good works such as Habitat for Humanity and defending Palestinian rights (oh the irony!!), on the advice of Zbigniew Brezinski, turned the CIA loose upon the Afghans, trained and bankrolled the Mujaheddin and drew the Russians into a bloody quagmire as it sought, unsuccessfully, to defend the progressive, pro-Soviet Afghan government.

The rest, as they say, is history.

As an antidote to main-stream media mythologizing, take 20 minutes to watch this excellent report by James Corbett at Global Research TV. Then curse the war criminals and mourn the lives needlessly sacrificed to satisfy imperial greed. Then organize.

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