Oppressive Wheat Regime Toppled
December 16, 2011Ottawa – The legal requirement that Prairie wheat farmers sell their grain to the monopolistic wheat board has been repealed.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Bill C-18 yesterday received Royal Assent. This bill decriminalizes the sale of prairie-grown wheat to buyers other than the Wheat Board.
Before this new legislation, it was a criminal offense for a farmer in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, or Alberta to sell their wheat to a mill, a grain processing company, or any other person or business. Those farmers were forced by the government to sell their wheat to the wheat board or else they couldn’t sell it at all.
Local MP Scott Reid was proud and relieved at the new change saying “This has been something I have been working at for a long time. It was one of the promises of my party when I was first elected as a member of the Canadian Alliance in 2000, and it’s been a key policy goal of the Conservative party ever since.”
“While this bill doesn’t directly affect anybody in our area, that’s part of the whole point. The Wheat Board regime was simply unfair because Ontario farmers have the freedom to sell their wheat to whomever they please, but prairie farmers were discriminated against.”
Introduced on October 18 of this year, Bill C-18 is now the law of the land. It is named the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act because it gives grain farmers in the prairie provinces the same freedoms that grain farmers in the other 7 provinces already enjoy – the freedom to sell their grain to whomever they choose.
This is one of the promises that Prime Minister Stephen Harper included in his re-election platform in the May 2nd election. During the election, Harper promised to be ambitious in accomplishing key planks of his platform within the first 100 “sitting days” of the House of Commons (days when the House of Commons meets). This particular bill became law on the 69th sitting day since Harper’s re-election – accomplishing another one of his key election promises.
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For further information contact:
Phil Joannou
Communications Assistant to Scott Reid, MP
613-947-2277
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