David Anderson, Cypress Hills-Grasslands M.P. and Parliamentary Secretary for the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) to Minister of Agriculture Chuck Strahl has escalated his attacks on any CWB supporters. These include Manitoba Minister of Agriculture Rosann Wowchuk (Herbert Herald Feb. 27), former CWB CEO Adrian Measner , NFU President Stewart Wells (Herbert Herald Mar. 6 ). Anderson implies that all of these individuals are not telling the truth in their support of the CWB single-desk marketing. This is simply not true. Recently, on Parliament Hill Anderson added CWB CEO Greg Arason to his list of ‘liars’ (Barry Wilson, March 8/07 Western Producer.)
But, is Anderson himself telling the truth? Anderson did not advise the public that:
- The Barley vote would have no public voters list.
- Groups hostile to the CWB (Alberta Barley Commission) have a list and phone numbers of probable voters in their Regions.
- There are no avenues to have scrutineers at the vote count
- There are no clear boundaries as to what majority is required to indicate a victory (50% +1 - 60%) or what???
- There is no clear question such as was earlier endorsed by the House of Commons…
Wheat
- __ I wish to maintain the ability to market all wheat, with the continuing
- exception of feed wheat sold domestically through the CWB single desk system
- __ I wish to remove the single desk marketing system from the CWB and sell
- all wheat through an open market system.
Barley
- __I wish to maintain the ability to market all barley, both malting/food, with the
- continuing exception of feed barley sold domestically, through the CWB single desk system.
- __I wish to remove the single desk marketing system from the CWB and sell
- all barley through an open market system.
- There is no limit on third party spending
- Strahl placed a gag order on the CWB preventing them from advising farmers of the benefits of single-desk selling. Yet Conservative M.P.’s are free to purchase ads promoting the Conservative agenda, and distribute their version through mail out to the public.
- There is no secret ballot. The voters name appears at the top of the page along with a number, the same number appears on the mail in ballot.
- “Each farming entity, whether a single producer, groups, a partnership, cooperatives or corporations farming as a single operation, will be eligible for one vote”. That can be read to mean one farm (entity) one vote, or it can be read to mean its opposite: every “entity” on the farm is entitled to a vote. Many ‘entities’ received several ballots.
- There are no assurances of safeguards to eliminate duplicate/fraudulent voters.
- The official KPMG website (2007barleyvote.ca) is completely surrounded by anti-CWB groups with almost identical URL’s. One of which was registered on Jan. 22. (More than a week before the KPMG site was placed on the internet. This indicates a leak from KPMG or the Government (KPMG is the auditing firm looking after the Barley vote)
Fess up Anderson – Who is really not telling the truth.
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