Save the Canadian Wheat Board!
2011Tom Baker 2011-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2011 9 On Oct. 18, Prime Minister Harper introduced legis lation to dismantle the 68-year-old, farmer-controlled Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). With a Conservative majority in Parliament, it is expected the bill will be come law before Christmas. Legislation to come into effect in August 2012 would allow a farmer to sell di rectly to grain-handling companies. With no “single desk selling,” the farmers will have no collective capi tal base or access to grain handling facilities.
The CWB Act requires that farmers vote in favour be fore major changes can be made to the CWB. The gov ernment is ignoring that law and the 37,000 western grain farmers (62 per cent of the total) who voted in a mail-in plebiscite this summer to retain CWB control over the marketing of grain.
Allen Oberg, chair of the CWB’s farmer-controlled board of directors, spoke at a Nov. 15 demonstration in Ottawa: “We are here because we cannot sit idly by while this government sacrifices farmers’ interests to those of giant American grain corporations. We cannot ... Occupy’s future (continued from page 8: “The future of the Occupy movement”) we clear a path to majority rule? The same way we defend and spread the Oc cupy movement. We tell the truth, we build alliances, and we fight the forces that stand in the way of liberation.
But before the workers’ and popular movements can go forward, we need to remove the obstacles within. I refer to the labour, NGO and NDP bureaucracies. Donations of food, tents and port-a-pot ties are good. But they are no substitute for organized resistence to labour con cessions in the workplace. They are no substitute for a battle over the lack of democracy in many unions and the NDP.
Rather than walk away from the prob lem, we need to dig in and fight for so cialist policies and democracy from the bottom up.
That’s what Socialist Action does. We build support for Occupy Toronto, and we organize a fighting opposition to la bour misleaders who go along with cut backs, with privatization, with layoffs in the public service (such as advocated by the Drummond commission at Queen’s Park). We argue for a General Strike to stop the cuts.
We oppose government contracts to build jet fighters and war ships, to con struct pipelines for dirty oil, and to in vest in nuclear energy. We demand a steeply progressive tax on big wealth, on inheritance, and on corporate prof its—not just an end to recent corporate tax cuts, not just abolition of the HST, not just a Robin Hood tax, or a Tobin Tax. We demand public ownership of the com stand and watch farmers’ democratic rights be steam rolled. This should be a farmer’s decision—not one that is made in Ottawa.”
CWB is spearheading a “Stop the Steam Roller” me dia campaign. Close to 30,000 Canadians sent letters to the federal government in just over a week demand ing that CWB control be saved. Court challenges are underway. The labour-based New Democratic Party, the Official Opposition in Parliament, as well as the NDP provincial government of Manitoba, denounced the federal government’s anti-democratic move.
Once the bill becomes law, grain handlers such as Viterra, Cargill, and the Winnipeg-based Richardson International Ltd will be allowed to immediately sign forward contracts with farmers for their 2012 grain harvests. Other transnationals, such as U.S.-based firms Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland, are expected to expand into Canada. Only the owners of the very largest farms will be able to negotiate effectively with the conglomerates, to the detriment of family farms and rural communities.
Canada is the world’s top exporter of spring wheat, manding heights of the economy under workers’ and community control.
We don’t think that we, or any individ ual or small group can accomplish this alone. For that reason Socialist Action devotes most of our efforts to building coalitions, alliances, broad unity in ac tion.
That is why we play a leading role in the NDP Socialist Caucus, a broad alli ance of anti-capitalist party members who seek to win the 4.5 million NDP vot ers to a Workers’ Agenda. That is why SA plays a leading role in the Workers’
Solidarity and Union Democracy Coali tion, which is now fighting layoffs, and opposing OPSEU leaders’ threat to quit the Ontario Federation of Labour.
That is why SA initiated the Oct. 15 Co alition of 11 organizations that marked the 10th anniversary of the imperialist durum, and malting barley. This legislation will rep resent a major shift of power from western Canadian grain farmers to transnational agri-food conglomer ates.
It is no surprise that major food processors, and their right-wing think-tank economists, see the CWB defeat as an opportunity to demand of the government that the historic rights of Canadian poultry, egg, and dairy farmers be dismantled or be fundamentally weakened. The “supply managed” sectors have legal authority to control import levels, plan production, and collectively bargain prices for their products. Free-trade advo cates claim these farm protection measures must be dismantled for Canada to participate in multi-country trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks.
The CWB should be defended by all who believe in food sovereignty, collective bargaining and democratic process. Solidarity of all working people with western Canadian farmers is critical at this time.
Capitalist governments are attacking the historical, institutionalized gains of farmers and the working class as a solution to the rulers’ economic crisis. Only a worker-farmer alliance can ‘stop the steamroller’ and fundamentally change society in the interest of the majority. n war and occupation of Afghanistan with a rally and march that concluded right here, in St. James Park.
We don’t have all the answers. But we do know this: To win in the face of corporate state power requires a revo lutionary perspective. It requires a con scious mass base in the working class. The revolutionary battle for hearts and minds takes place in the existing mass working-class organizations. That is where we are fighting to build solidar ity, to build the Occupy movement, to spread it to unions, to the NDP, to work places and communities, and to put an end to the cancer of capitalist minority rule.
We are with you 100%. We invite you to work with us, to join SA and Youth for Socialist Action. Together we will win, much sooner than later.” n
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