That was because her colleague had flown to Regina for a meeting with Ralph Goodale.

It was one of the countless times I’ve been reminded of the influence carried by Goodale, a 26-year veteran MP who had been serving in the most recent government cabinet.

He’s been described by Ottawa types as “key” to how the Liberal government shapes its agricultural policy.

The sentiment is shared by just about anyone who came across the affable Goodale, who somehow appeared at every community event in Regina and simultaneously managed the ministerial portfolio of public safety in Ottawa.

He was the one who announced the party’s agricultural platform in 2015, and countless investments or supports to the industry in the four years since. History will not look kindly on people who disparage his political record and net benefit to this country.

On Oct. 21, he lost his seat. So did every other Liberal in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

If anyone still needs convincing there is a visceral dislike in Western Canada for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals — and by extension, his federally imposed price on carbon — they should look no further than Goodale’s loss in Regina-Wascana.

Voters in that riding traded an influential and respected cabinet minister for a rookie opposition backbencher.

Right-leaning conservative premiers made sure carbon pricing was a difficult sell to Prairie folks. The Conservatives attempted to make it a definitive issue in election. On the Prairies, it worked.

Goodale’s botched sales job may very well have cost him his seat.

He was the sacrificial Prairie Liberal tasked with defending a carbon price, starting on the day the federal plan was announced. That same day, Saskatchewan’s Minister of Environment Dustin Duncan accused Goodale and the Liberals of not understanding farmers.

Given the constant complaints from farmers about the costs associated with a federal carbon price now being imposed in New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, there is at least anecdotal proof Duncan was correct.

Many farmers don’t like the carbon tax, despite the federal government’s insistence revenue generated from it comes back either directly or indirectly to them.

The absence of Goodale leaves a hole that will not be filled by Trudeau, if for no other reason than simple geography. There will be those who try. Liberal insiders are quick to throw out names of caucus members with ag backgrounds, suggesting they will have a voice in Goodale’s absence.

An example: Liberal MP Pat Finnigan holds a farming background and will return to Ottawa representing the good people of New Brunswick’s Miramichi-Grand Lake riding.

Each of the MPs who were sitting on the agricultural committee were re-elected, with many of them presumably set to resume their old duties of shaping ag-based policy in a multi-partisan effort.

Quebec-based Marie-Claude Bibeau, the country’s most recently serving minister of agriculture, kept her seat. We likely won’t know if she keeps the cabinet portfolio until Nov. 20, although it is worth noting she is considered a competent minister.

Language and geography work against Bibeau. English is her second language and Quebec is her home province, none of which helps her in a western demographic dangerously flirting with notions of separation, harbouring an inherent dislike for most things Quebecois, and holding a dislike for any sniff of central-Canadian elitism.

There is no heir to Goodale in the Liberal caucus. There is nobody waiting in the wings who understands the West, and can share that knowledge at the cabinet table.

Knowing this, Trudeau is attempting to say all the right things: telling Alberta and Saskatchewan he hears their concerns. A vow to move its nationalized Trans Mountain Pipeline project forward helped to a degree, and he is expected to make efforts to solidify more export markets for Canadian producers.

How he aims to dampen the anger felt in Western Canada and to convince farmers they are still being heard around his cabinet table remains a mystery.

Until that mystery is solved, farmers in Western Canada cannot be sure if Goodale’s absence leaves them better off than they were before the election.

The post Comment: Goodale’s election loss silences the western farm voice at the cabinet table appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Analyzing figures from Global Affairs Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency found “authorizations, certificates, and permits for those items that were on the Import Control List… did not match the volumes authorized for importing annually with the volumes that importers declared to the agency as eligible for a lower rate of duty,” Ferguson said.

The report estimates that $168 million in duties were not collected on $131 million worth of chicken, turkey, beef, eggs, and dairy products, meaning that seven to eight per cent were therefore imported without the appropriate permits.

Dairy had the biggest hit with $81 million in unassessed customs duties and $32 million of product entering the country without permits. Chicken was next with $50 million in unassessed duties and $20 million in products without permits. For turkey the figures $15 million and $9 million, beef $11 million and $41 million and eggs $11 million and $29 million.

The finding reinforces complaints from farm groups about mislabelled imports.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, a former agriculture minister, said the CBSA was working “to deal with the import problems and is reviewing its processes for customs duties. The CBSA will also continue to enhance the monitoring of its risk controls for corruption to ensure they are working as expected.”

Ferguson said Global Affairs Canada and CBSA “should better enforce tariff-rate quotas by reviewing the process of verifying permits. It should also explore automated means to validate accounting declarations for quota-controlled goods to be charged customs duties at a lower rate.”

Both organizations agreed to take action and hope to have a solution by this September.

The post Ottawa loses millions on import duties appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The case of a Canadian man barred from U.S. travel because he admitted to having smoked pot recreationally has sparked a debate about U.S. border agents using a federal law against marijuana use, even though pot use is legal in several states and soon to be legal in Canada.

“We obviously need to intensify our discussions with our border authorities in the United States, including the Department of Homeland Security,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said in an interview with CBC late Thursday.

“This does seem to be a ludicrous situation,” he said, noting that marijuana is legal in Washington state as well as “three or four other jurisdictions in the United States.”

A spokesman said on Friday that while the Canadian government has been speaking with the U.S. government to ensure officials are aware of Canada’s plans to legalize marijuana, the controversy over Canadians being stopped at the border and banned from future travel has not been addressed.

“In terms of the practices of border guards in question, those only came to widespread attention recently and will be discussed in future bilateral discussions,” Scott Bardsley, spokesman for Goodale, said in an email.

Officials at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, at the U.S. State Department and at U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to local media reports, British Columbia resident Matthew Harvey was stopped at a U.S. border crossing in Washington state in 2014 and asked about recreational marijuana use. When Harvey, who had a permit to use medical marijuana, said he had smoked pot recreationally, he was denied entry and banned from future entry. While he can apply for a travel waiver to be admitted temporarily, it is costly and discretionary.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to legalize recreational marijuana and the government has said it would introduce legislation by the spring of 2017.

Twenty-five U.S. states have sanctioned some forms of marijuana use for medical purposes, while four allow recreational use. Nine other states have recreational or medical marijuana proposals headed for their ballots in the November election.

— Andrea Hopkins is the Ottawa bureau chief for Reuters.

The post Canada to press U.S. on ‘ludicrous’ marijuana border policy appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

We think not.

During the height of the PEDv outbreak in the U.S. two years ago, the CFIA suspended a rule that required trucks delivering pigs to U.S. farms be washed before returning to Canada. So when truckers reached the border, their trucks were sealed and they had to have an appointment at a Manitoba truck wash to have their unit cleaned before they were allowed to proceed.

However, the CFIA since reinstated the previous rule, using the logic that washing trucks before they cross back into Canada is an “effective tool” for keeping swine diseases out. We’ll grant that theoretically, this seems logical.

But logic doesn’t apply to human nature.

The PEDv outbreak in the U.S. two years ago killed eight million hogs and it spread faster than anyone could imagine through multiple means, ranging from tire treads to loading docks to contaminated feed. Surprisingly, truck wash stations in the U.S. were also identified as a vector.

It turns out many use recycled water. As Homer Simpson would say: ‘Doh!’

Finding a wash station that doesn’t use recycled water in the U.S. border states can take truckers hundreds of miles out of their way.

Allowing trucks from Canada to return to Canada before being cleaned proved to be an effective strategy for preventing PEDv outbreaks here.

In reality, hog truckers are now faced with two stops at a truck wash, first in the U.S. as required by the federal rules and secondly, at a wash station in Manitoba to make sure they are clean.

But of course, stopping at the first wash station, at which they face a higher risk of being exposed to the virus is required. The second stop, which is now on the front lines of keeping the virus out, is optional.

Explain that one to a banker.

The explanations coming from CFIA for ignoring the industry’s pleas and the federal minister’s blind acceptance of the agency’s position fall far short of adequate.

Prison farms studied

There were many Canadians who disagreed with the former federal government’s decision to close the network of prison farms in this country a few years ago.

The Conservatives under Stephen Harper ended the prison farm program at six minimum-security prisons across Canada in 2010.

It was said to be done to save money, but philosophically it was because it was perceived that learning how to milk a cow or feed chickens wasn’t punitive enough and did little to prepare inmates for the modern world.

Some of the citizens protesting the decision were arrested and even went to jail over it. They also formed a co-op to buy up some of the cows from the Kingston dairy farm as part of a co-op to keep the herd around for when a new government might reconsider. And there was a weekly vigil at the entrance to one of the former farms “to remind the government and the public that closing the prison farms was a mistake that can be corrected,” said Jeff Peters, a member of Save Our Prison Farms (SOPF) in a release.

That wait took five years longer than first anticipated, after the Harper government was elected to a majority.

But it now appears their efforts have paid off.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has launched a feasibility study on restoring the prison farms — at least the two in the Kingston, Ontario area.

What’s more, that study will allow for public input.

“The farms provided meaningful work experience and training, as well as rehabilitation and therapy. Prison staff told us that inmates who participated in the prison farm program were less likely than inmates overall to reoffend when they were released, so the program made our communities safer,” Peters said.

Many of the inmates who served in the farm program did leave with skills that they used to support themselves in manufacturing, truck driving, heavy equipment operation and construction, as well as work related to agriculture.

Of course, a feasibility study is no guarantee that the farms will be reinstated, and so far, nothing has been said about reopening the four other prison farms, including the one at Manitoba’s Stony Mountain.

The prison farms were collectively losing about $4 million annually when the previous government decided to close them, although if they lowered an inmate’s risk of reoffending you could argue that is money well spent. A 2013 report showed that the average cost to taxpayers of keeping someone in prison for a year is about $117,000.

The local citizens and farm organizations such as the National Farmers Union deserve kudos for their persistence.

The post Editorial: Keeping PEDv out appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Other priorities include determining if farm aid programs are adequate, investing in infrastructure to protect soil and water and refocusing the government’s role in scientific research.

The Canadian Wheat Board is not coming back, but the Liberal government will dig into its apparent ‘giveaway’ to a foreign company and perhaps release the CWB’s 2012-13 annual report and financial statements that former agricuture minister Gerry Ritz kept secret.

• More on the Manitoba Co-operator: CWB sale to be scrutinized by new Liberal government

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet, including an agriculture minister, were to be sworn in Nov. 4 — two days after this week’s Manitoba Co-operator went to press.

Grain transportation is a priority, Goodale said in an interview last week, noting that a review of the Canadian Transportation Act led by former cabinet minister David Emerson is supposed to be done by the end of the year.

“This presents an opportunity for significant improvements in the system. It will be important to seize that opportunity to put in place a system that will not be prone to the kind of disaster that happened in 2013-14.”

Canada produced a record crop that year, but a backlog developed in railway grain shipments. Farmers and grain companies blamed the railways for not investing in enough surge capacity; the railways blamed the big crop and the coldest winter in 100 years.

Although the new government will consider Emerson’s recommendations, it’s on record as supporting subjecting the railways to commercial penalties for failing to fulfil service agreements with grain shippers. That’s just normal contractual law, Goodale said.

“This is the only case where it doesn’t apply,” he added. “What seems astounding is that the railways seem astounded when you say the basic principles of business and contract law should apply to them.”

It’s also time to calculate the railways’ costs of shipping grain — something last done in 1992, Goodale said. The formula used to set the railways’ maximum revenue entitlement is based on those 1992 costs, adjusted annually for inflation. However, it’s widely believed by farm groups that many railway costs have declined due to increased rail and grain-handling efficiency, resulting in farmers paying much more than intended.

“It is reasonable I think, to update the arithmetic,” Goodale said.

TPP review

The new government is also keen to review the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement before endorsing it.

While former minister Gerry Ritz was widely praised for his many trade missions to boost Canadian farm exports, Goodale isn’t impressed.

“The previous government seemed content to go from one trade negotiation to the other without a heck of a lot of followup,” he said.

“Once you’ve got the market access then you’ve got to make use of it and this government has not had a marketing or sales strategy. The end result is we’ve had 55 months of trade deficits under the Harper government.”

Ritz’s efforts lack the “pizzaz” of the Team Canada trade missions conducted by former Liberal government, according to Goodale.

The Conservative government cut farm program budgets and made it harder to trigger payments from AgriStability. Goodale said the new government will consult with farm groups and the provinces to see if the programs can meet farmers’ needs when commodity prices fall.

Some of the Liberal government’s infrastructure spending is intended for natural resources infrastructure, Goodale said.

“With the onset of more and more consequences from climate change we are very likely to have more frequent and more severe cycles of floods and droughts,” he said.

“The frustration is some years you have a flood and lack systems to control it or save it and then next year you have a drought.”

More basic research

The Liberals plan big changes to government scientific research, including in agriculture. There will be more basic, curiosity research, not just applied research tied to a commercial outcome, Goodale said.

“Science within the Government of Canada is totally messed up and the scientific community within the government is obviously muzzled and intimidated,” he said. “The whole thing needs to be examined from top to bottom to get science policy right.

“There’s a lot of work to do to repair the damage that has been done.”

Although the Liberals won a strong majority Oct. 19, outside of Atlantic Canada they have few rural seats. Asked how the new government will avoid becoming city-centric Goodale replied: “We’ll just have to work very hard at it.

“The prime-minister elect has made it very clear that he wants to be a prime minister for all of Canada and we’ll work very hard to achieve that.”

The post The Liberal government’s ‘to do’ list on agriculture appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“A number of farmers has raised the question and said the numbers just don’t add up,” Saskatchewan MP and former agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said in an interview last week.

“Once we have a chance to examine the information that’s available internally maybe we will be able to shed some light for farmers on just exactly what transpired. What values were involved, what money changed hands, how the assets were valued and how it came about that Bunge and Saudi Arabia are now effectively the owners of what used to be the wheat board.

“It appears to have been a gift. But until we have a chance to view the internal information it’s just impossible to fully assess what has gone on here. You can imagine why some farmers are curious.”

In July G3 Global Grain Group, a joint venture of Bunge and state-owned Saudi Agricultural Livestock Investment Company (SALIC), ostensibly bought CWB for $250.5 million. However, the newly formed company kept the money instead of paying the Canadian government, which owned CWB. While the transaction raised eyebrows among some Canadian grain company executives and was criticized by several farm groups, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz defended it saying it made for a stronger new company.

Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, which is suing the government, alleges CWB assets belonged to farmers. It wants to see the wheat board’s financial statements.

Canada’s agriculture minister is obliged to present the wheat board’s annual report to Parliament — something Ritz said he did. However, what was made public revealed almost nothing. Ritz said he was permitted to keep sensitive information private.

“For all of the complaints about the old wheat board it was far more transparent than the new entity has ever been,” Goodale said. “And now that the remains are in the hands of a foreign corporation and a foreign government you’ll never be able to have the complete story.”

The post CWB sale to be scrutinized by new Liberal government appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Other priorities include determining if farm aid programs are adequate, investing in infrastructure to protect soil and water and refocusing the government’s role in scientific research.

The Canadian Wheat Board is not coming back, but the Liberal government will dig into its apparent ‘giveaway’ to a foreign company and perhaps release the CWB’s 2012-13 annual report and financial statements that former agricuture minister Gerry Ritz kept secret.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet, including an agriculture minister, were to be sworn in Nov. 4 — two days after this week’s Manitoba Co-operator went to press.

Grain transportation is a priority, Goodale said in an interview last week, noting that a review of the Canadian Transportation Act led by former cabinet minister David Emerson is supposed to be done by the end of the year.

“This presents an opportunity for significant improvements in the system. It will be important to seize that opportunity to put in place a system that will not be prone to the kind of disaster that happened in 2013-14.”

Canada produced a record crop that year, but a backlog developed in railway grain shipments. Farmers and grain companies blamed the railways for not investing in enough surge capacity; the railways blamed the big crop and the coldest winter in 100 years.

Although the new government will consider Emerson’s recommendations, it’s on record as supporting subjecting the railways to commercial penalties for failing to fulfil service agreements with grain shippers. That’s just normal contractual law, Goodale said.

“This is the only case where it doesn’t apply,” he added. “What seems astounding is that the railways seem astounded when you say the basic principles of business and contract law should apply to them.”

It’s also time to calculate the railways’ costs of shipping grain — something last done in 1992, Goodale said. The formula used to set the railways’ maximum revenue entitlement is based on those 1992 costs, adjusted annually for inflation. However, it’s widely believed by farm groups that many railway costs have declined due to increased rail and grain-handling efficiency, resulting in farmers paying much more than intended.

“It is reasonable I think, to update the arithmetic,” Goodale said.

TPP review

The new government is also keen to review the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement before endorsing it.

While former minister Gerry Ritz was widely praised for his many trade missions to boost Canadian farm exports, Goodale isn’t impressed.

“The previous government seemed content to go from one trade negotiation to the other without a heck of a lot of followup,” he said.

“Once you’ve got the market access then you’ve got to make use of it and this government has not had a marketing or sales strategy. The end result is we’ve had 55 months of trade deficits under the Harper government.”

Ritz’s efforts lack the “pizzaz” of the Team Canada trade missions conducted by former Liberal government, according to Goodale.

The Conservative government cut farm program budgets and made it harder to trigger payments from AgriStability. Goodale said the new government will consult with farm groups and the provinces to see if the programs can meet farmers’ needs when commodity prices fall.

Some of the Liberal government’s infrastructure spending is intended for natural resources infrastructure, Goodale said.

“With the onset of more and more consequences from climate change we are very likely to have more frequent and more severe cycles of floods and droughts,” he said.

“The frustration is some years you have a flood and a lack systems to control it or save it and then next year you have a drought.”

More basic research

The Liberals plan big changes to government scientific research, including in agriculture. There will be more basic, curiosity research, not just applied research tied to a commercial outcome, Goodale said.

“Science within the Government of Canada is totally messed up and the scientific community within the government is obviously muzzled and intimidated,” he said. “The whole thing needs to be examined from top to bottom to get science policy right.

“There’s a lot of work to do to repair the damage that has been done.”

Although the Liberals won a strong majority Oct. 19, outside of Atlantic Canada they have few rural seats. Asked how the new government will avoid becoming city-centric Goodale replied: “We’ll just have to work very hard at it.

“The prime minister elect has made it very clear that he wants to be a prime minister for all of Canada and we’ll work very hard to achieve that.”

allan@fbcpublishing.com

The post New Liberal government has lots on its ag ‘to do’ list appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Whoever Justin Trudeau selects will find Gerry Ritz a tough act to follow. During his eight years in the portfolio, he has put an increasing production and export stamp on the industry. And he caught a lucky bounce with strong commodity prices although the livestock sector had tough times.

Ritz flew around the globe more times than anyone can count promoting Canadian farm and food products. He can recite seemingly endless facts and figures about Canadian agri-food. He did a lot to convince the agriculture and food sectors into realizing they are partners in one of Canada’s most significant industries.

Despite his accomplishments and the support he gathered in the agri-food sector, he rarely received the credit he deserved from his own government. After all he did to promote the would-be Canada-Europe free trade deal, he wasn’t included in the herd of ministers who announced its completion.

The only veteran members of the Trudeau team with a connection to agriculture are Ralph Goodale, a former ag minister and the party’s deputy leader, and Wayne Easter. He has deep roots in farming and cabinet experience which will likely land him a senior cabinet post. Mark Eyking was the Liberal agriculture critic for the last few years but his Nova Scotia riding is too far removed from mainstream Canadian agriculture. He’s expected to land a regional portfolio.

Insiders note that Trudeau, who made a good impression on delegates in an address to the annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture in 2014, thinks of the agri-food sector as an agriculture, food and consumer continuum. As he has mostly urban MPs, he may have no choice but to select an urban MP.

The insiders expect the Liberals’ food platform, released during the campaign, will become required reading for everyone in the sector.

Ritz, who was first elected in 1997, served as Reform ag critic, then the Conservative chair of the Commons agriculture committee before being appointed to cabinet. He is well liked among farm organizations except for the NFU, which is still smarting over the end of the Canadian Wheat Board. It’s the same amongst the myriad of organizations involved in the food and beverage sector.

From a personal perspective, Ritz was remarkable in that unlike most of his prickly Harper cabinet colleagues, he retained a sense of humour and was always civil in dealings with the media, political opponents and critics. A sense of humour is a rare commodity in politics but he ranked with Don Jamieson and Herb Gray in finding the amusing side of many issues. It showed through during the CFA’s agriculture issues debate a couple of weeks ago.

That said, he missed two opportunities to put this respect to good use.

One was in October 2013, when CN CEO Claude Mongeau rang the alarm about a massive Prairie crop that would require a lot of co-operation to ship. Two months later Ritz was still insisting the grain was moving when it wasn’t. Ritz should have jumped on Mongeau’s comment to convene a meeting of farm groups, grain companies and the railways to get the grain moving. He had the creds to do that.

The other was supply management. Dairy supply management has been around for 40 years and the poultry boards aren’t far behind. They were designed for a much different agriculture than we now have. Ritz could have used his good standing with the boards to have the Commons or Senate agriculture committee take a long hard look at what works and what doesn’t. This should be an exercise in what changes are needed to make supply management relevant to 2020, not 1970.

Of course, even if he had wanted to take either initiative, there’s no guarantee the cabinet would have backed him.

Hopefully the history books will give Gerry his due.

— Alex Binkley is a member of the Parliamentary press gallery in Ottawa and a freelance reporter on federal agriculture, food safety and transportation policy and other issues for newspapers and farm journals across Canada and abroad. Follow him at @AlexBinkleyWrit on Twitter.

The post Binkley: Speculation swirls on Grits’ successor for Ritz appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But improved long-term planning for times of excess and drought can reduce our vulnerability to the latter, said speakers at the inaugural Assiniboine River Basin Initiative conference in Regina earlier this month.

“One of the reasons we have so much in the way of flood damage is that we’re kind of stupid in the way we manage flood plains,” said Bob Halliday, board chair with the Partners for the Saskatchewan River Basin, who gave the opening address.

Meeting participants agreed at the November 12-14 meeting to develop a joint approach between Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota to manage the sub-basins of the Qu’Appelle, Souris (Mouse), and the Assiniboine rivers.

All three areas have experienced massive flooding in 2011 and 2014 that has caused billions of dollars of damages to rural and urban infrastructure.

Resilient

What’s needed long term is a way to make cities and rural landscapes more resilient to these events, said Halliday.

“We cannot assume we can occupy a flood plain willy-nilly and leave somebody else to pay the bills.”

Halliday detailed several key vulnerabilities of the watershed, including the alteration of the original landscape, and the inevitability of more severe weather events to come.

What we’re now facing is a fundamental inability to absorb these weather shocks because we lack the needed infrastructure to mitigate against them, and capacity to plan for them, he said.

He reminded the conference — focused largely on flood-related issues — that inevitably we’ll have the opposite problem to water flowing uncontrollably across the landscape.

We’re not well prepared for this either, he said.

Three years is about the limit of what this region can handle, after which the capability of reservoirs on the Prairies and Northern Great Plains of the U.S. are pretty well tapped out.

(Other speakers at the conference spoke of scientific historical data showing drought has gripped the Prairies for literally decades in pre-settlement times.)

“You can deal with contingency measures for about three years and then it really gets tough,” he said.

“I like to think the best time to talk about drought management and contingency plans is when you don’t have a drought,” he said, adding, “the same could be said about flooding.”

Important gain

Forming the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative (ARBI) is an important gain for a region needing both a framework of laws and policies to manage water as well as broad-based longer-term planning and capacity building, he said.

The end of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, formed during the dust bowl of the 1930s, is nothing less than “an appalling disaster,” he said.

“Where was the PFRA?” was the question Ralph Goodale (MP — Wascana) said he heard repeatedly in the aftermath of severe flooding experienced across southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba.

“For 75 years the PFRA was our ace in the hole,” he said, adding that what’s now missing without it is a coherent plan on a region-wide basis.

The end of the PFRA has reduced both the federal capacity to act on and understand water issues, said Goodale. He said the formation of the ARBI is an opportunity for this level of government to help both fund and facilitate water management efforts.

“Hopefully this can lead to a larger and more successful outcome, not just for the Assiniboine basin, as important as that is, but in the ongoing proper intelligent management of water resources for all the Prairie region,” he said.

The post ‘Disaster by design’ wreaks flood havoc on the Prairies appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Farmers and taxpayers have a right to see CWB’s financial statements Liberal MP Ralph Goodale and NDP Agriculture Critic Malcolm Allen said in separate interviews last week.

“It should be remembered whatever revenue and assets this new creature (CWB) has inherited, it has inherited all of that value from farmers,” Goodale, a former Canadian Wheat Board minister, said in an interview Sept. 25. “This is farmers’ money, farmers’ assets, not to be played with arbitrarily and secretly by the government.”

Allen said Ritz’s move is distressing, but not surprising.

“Once again this government lacks transparency and accountability to farmers and the Canadian public around an asset they still actually own.”

Amended act

CWB is the government-owned grain company created Aug. 1, 2012 when Ottawa ended the Canadian Wheat Board’s sales monopoly on western wheat and barley destined for domestic human consumption or export.

Under the amended Canadian Wheat Board Act, CWB is obliged to present Canada’s agriculture minister with an annual report, including its audited financial statements, and the minister must table it in Parliament. The same applied to the old Canadian Wheat Board. However, Section 21(1)3 of the act allows the minister to withhold information he deems to be commercially sensitive.

One of Ritz’s officials said the minister tabled CWB’s annual report in July, but only the notes to CWB’s financial statement are available. The notes refer to accounting practices and potential liabilities, but provide no information about the company’s finances.

According to Allen the notes weren’t tabled in Parliament, but with Parliament’s Journals Branch.

Neither Goodale nor Allen believes CWB’s entire annual report to be too commercially sensitive to release. The annual reports released to Parliament and the public by the old wheat board reported included a complete accounting of its revenues and expenses, broken out by each pool, as well as volumes of grain sold and to which markets.

The salaries of the highest-paid employees were also included as well as the per diems and expenses of both elected and appointed directors.

Challenge

Goodale said Ritz’s decision to keep the report essentially secret should be challenged in court and reviewed by Canada’s auditor general.

“This is a healthy dose of hypocrisy from this government,” Goodale said. “It would rail at the so-called secrecy of the former Canadian Wheat Board… but this new entity is a complete black box. It’s just a joke.”

Goodale said he suspects CWB didn’t do well in its first year in an open market. If it had, Ritz would be bragging about it, Goodale said.

In April, CWB president and CEO Ian White said CWB intends to provide a privatization plan to Ritz before the 2016 deadline set out in legislation, which requires CWB to be privatized or wound down by 2017.

“We expect our privatization to happen sooner than that,” White said. “We are expecting to be able to get a plan to government this year and then the process will take place after that.”

Last month, Farmers of North America (FNA) proposed creating a farmer-owned company that would take majority ownership of CWB. FNA also proposed the new company distribute nitrogen manufactured by the farmer-controlled nitrogen plant FNA is promoting.

When Liberal MP Wayne Easter asked about CWB’s annual report in the House of Commons Sept. 26 Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture, replied: Mr. Speaker, much to the joy of our western Canadian grain farmers, our government delivered on its promise to free them of an obligatory marketing board. We were elected on a platform to deliver marketing freedom to farmers and we followed through on that commitment.

However, as the Canadian Wheat Board now competes in the open market, it has a right to protect commercially sensitive information.

The post Opposition MPs decry decision to not make CWB’s 2012-13 annual report public appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.