The Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board have rejected the federal government’s scheme to remove limits on third-party spending in the upcoming CWB director elections. “We seriously doubt that it is the government’s true and sincere intention to encourage a thorough, public discussion about the future direction of the CWB with this latest devious manoeuvre,” said Wilf Harder, a Lowe Farm, MB, grain producer. “In reality, this change will allow third parties to spend money without limit and without any accountability whatsoever to farmers.”
The Friends said they are disappointed by the government’s latest dirty trick, but are not surprised, given Prime Minister Harper’s recent comments that anyone who stands in the way of his government’s obsession with dismantling the CWB will “get walked over.”
Ironically, it was Harper who got trampled by the Supreme Court of Canada which decided against Harper in a case on spending limits in 2004. In that ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that “without limits a few wealthy groups could drown others in debates on important political issues……In the absence of spending limits, it is possible for the affluent or a number of persons pooling their resources and acting in concert to dominate the political discourse depriving their opponents of a reasonable opportunity to speak and be heard and undermining the voter’s ability to be adequately informed of all views.”
The Friends havemade their views known to the government in a formal submission, attached below, which asks the Governor-in-Council to reject the federal government’s scheme.
“The proposed amendment is anti-democratic and mischievously designed to influence the upcoming director elections and thereby undermine the marketing authority of the CWB,” said Bill Woods, a grain producer and producer car shipper at Eston, SK, and a recently declared candidate for CWB director in District #4.
For more information, contact…..
Wilf (Butch) Harder (204) 746-5049/8005
Bill Woods (306) 460-9599 or (306) 962-4477