Tae

By FRANK GOLDSPINK

After a deliberate and insidious 10-
year campaign, the federal Liberal
government and the railroads have
finally succeeded in splitting the main
Prairie farm organizations over the ques-
tion of the Crowsnest Pass Statutory
freight rates.

Monopoly interests who are seeking to
maximize the profits of the Canadian
Pacific Railways and the western coal
companies now have various farm
groups bickering with each other over

how to spend what amounts to a paltry _

sum ($3.6 billion to be divided among
tens of thousands of farmers, compared
with CPR profits over the decades and
those to come). As a result, the time has
never been nper for those interests to
Step in and impose a solution which will
mean the end to Prairie rural life as many
know it.

The campaign started 10 years ago
when the notorious Liberal cabinet
minister Otto Lang first proposed a
“user-pay’’ (read farmer-pay) scheme
for grain transportation.

There was a massive outcry on the
Prairies and the Liberal friends of
monopoly learned quickly that if they
wanted to have that kind of change, they
would have to create the climate for it,
get some farm groups demanding it.

The first step was a campaign to liter-
ally ‘‘railroad’’ the mass media into sup-
porting the contention that the CPR and
Canadian National Railways were not
“bad guys”’ for asking that all sectors
(read farmers) should help pay the costs
of improving the grain transportation
system.

Enter Jean-Luc Pepin, transport
minister and smooth politician, who set
out to convince farm groups that they
would be part of the decision-making
process and would be able to protect
their interests. Pepin drove what he
thought was the final nail into the prairie
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 3, 1982—Page 6

coffin when he set up the western grain
transportation commission under Uni-
versity of Manitoba professor Clay
Gilson.

This alleged consultative process,
which had its results set out in a govern-
ment memo written even before the first
public meeting was held, drew in a large
number of Prairie farm groups, making
them appear a party to the final recom-
mendations for dismantling the Crow,
recommendations which will result in
farmers paying to fill the profitable poc-
kets of the CPR and mining corporations.

The Gilson commission, in general,
was aimed at trying to create a climate in
the Prairie countryside that a change was
needed in freight rates and the trans-
portation system as a whole. Part of the
thrust was to create guilt among farmers
by putting the issue in the context of a
100-year-old freight rate which ‘‘ob-
viously’’ is outdated.

Gilson was assisted by a feeling among
large farmers that the supposedly wide-
open, supposedly competitive system of
grain sales and transportation in the Uni-
ted States would be the answer to their
problems. In fact, many of those farmers
would survive the changes proposed by
Gilson, and become larger, at the ex-
pense of the neighbors who are not so
highly capitalized.

The National Farmers Union refused
to participate in the Gilson hearings.
‘“We knew it was a farce, we knew what
the game was,’’ says Goldwyn Jones, a
Manitoba representative on the NFU na-
tional board.

Some groups which co-operated
whole-hearedly with Gilson at the begin-
ning are now trying to explain to their
members. There has been a wide-scale
revolt among grass roots members of the
Prairie wheat pools. In Manitoba, Pool
leaders have voted to pull out of the pro-
vincial agriculture federation, the Man-
itoba Farm Bureau. Although the im-

KILL CROW RATE

mediate fight is over the Gilson re-
commendation to pay so-called trans-
portation subsidies to producers rather
than the railroads, many Manitoba far-
mers realize their long-term future is at
stake.

‘‘Farmers know they can’t afford to
pay more and they’re just beginning to
realize what a change in rates will
mean,”’ Jones says. The NFU predicts
that farmers who are already facing a
20% cut in income because of the current
economic crisis will lose as much as 30%
if the freight rate structure is changed.

The Manitoba Farm Bureau appears
most badly divided as a result of federal
manipulation, including the Gilson re-
port. With the Pool voting to pull out,
Farm Bureau leaders are reluctant to say
what the umbrella organization’s posi-
tion is.

The split is not as bad in the Sask-
atchewan Federation of Agriculture or in
Alberta’s Unifarm. The same debate is
raging in the two organizations although
both officially support direct payments to
the railroads.

Payments to Farmers

Within the three provincial groups,
livestock producers, the commercial
grain companies like United Grain
Growers and some large grain producers
are lined up against the pools and their
supporters and call for direct payments
to farmers. But the biggest push for this is
coming from organizations outside the
three federations.

The Saskatchewan-based Palliser
Wheat Growers Association and the Al-
berta Cattle Commission, which quit
Unifarm in January, represent powerful
agribusiness interests which are sitting
back and gleefully watching the federa-
tions tear themselves apart on a side
issue while the steamroller to smash the
Crow goes unopposed, except by the
NFU.

To add to the confusion, a vague equal-

—

Communist position

Attacks on the Crow Rate were
condemned at the 25th Convention | |
of the Communist Party of Canada \/
in February 1982. ‘‘The Communist
Party ... fully supports the farmers
who are fighting for retention of the
Crow Rate and for a new deal for the
small farmer,’’ said a resolution
which passed unanimously.

Urging a united fightback of all
interested groups, the resolution
said: “A coalition of the labor and
farm movements along with the NeW
Democratic Party, the Communist
Party and all democratic groups is
both possible and urgently ||

necessary. .

Charging that the CPR will be
‘the main beneficiary” of killing the
Crow Rate, the Communist Party
called for retention of the Crow ||
Rate, and nationalization of the | |
CPR “‘as part of a publicly-owned
and democratically-controlled |
transportation system.”’

|

—

ization proposal has surfaced to com .
|

pensate livestock producers who clail
the Crow gives an advantage to caste
operators. Many sectors in the three fi
erations accept this argument, alt -
it is challenged by the NFU and othe”
who say that, in any case, it is po a
stitute for protecting all farmers " |
terests by saving the Crow. a
Not satisfied with the introductiot =
splitting tactics like the Gilson © ‘
mission, the federal government ©
gone out of its way to encourage. form
tion of new groups like the Prairie F“ of
Commodity Coalition, an organiza, |
listed in Gilson’s report as having (¢ |
affiliated commodity organizations,
them from Alberta. sent
The coalition claims to repre
78,000 farmers and has had an nts |
amount of attention from governme 2 |
and the media. “I don’t know wher)
figure like that would be dreamed "P
says Goldwyn Jones of the NFU. “8 |
tainly, the average farmer 1S? |
member.”’ |