Mansbridge and Harper interview

[BreadWinner]

Sawfly you must be campaigning for the next election with all those anti Harper spewings. Better move back to Russia with all your socialist ideas. Putin will treat you well he might even let you have a loaf if bread for Christmas.

[mustardman]

Well said sawfly.. I could not agree more

[ado089]

Exactly bgmb! I don't even understand what the argument is anymore...I guess that's what they want.

[FarmRanger]

<i>“but the grain companies, no one really knows anything about them Bob.”</i>
Including James Nolan the economist. He predicts the “6 or 7 grain companies will dwindle down to 2 or 3”. Well, if there’s so much profit in the system, why would there be so much consolidation?

He mentions the rent the rail companies extract out of the system, but the real issue is that the rail system as it now exists can’t even begin to handle the surge of a massive crop like what we had in 2013. And the “orderly marketing” that we used to have only succeeded in masking the problem so that there was never any incentive to fix it. The farmers simply were forced to store their crop for 2 or more years, with no possibility of farmers clearing their bins until the supremely powerful entity allowed them to. (Don’t want to mention the name for fear of summoning the spectre to this discussion).

Personally I don’t trust his prediction of farmers getting 20% of the dollar, heck even the Peace farmers could truck it to the States for far less. Something we’ve done very little of, but sure is nice to have, is the stick of a threat to take our business elsewhere. Mr. Nolan models are still preprogrammed with the old system where we had no relief valve to force competition. It was take the single buyers price or don’t grow wheat. Even his pessimistic worst case scenario with 2 or 3 buyers is better than one supremely powerful buyer able to shut out all competition.

[chuckChuck]

What was funny about the Mansbridge interview was Harper couldn't bring himself to say the word "carbon tax" when he cited Alberta's carbon tax program that is paid into a technology fund on industries that exceed their allowed carbon emissions. Carbon price, carbon levy whatever he called it. It was priceless.

We indeed have become a petro state. The oil sands are our mecca and Harper wouldn't want to piss off his oil buddies in Calgary.

I can't think of anything more embarrassing than comparing Norway's 1 Trillion dollars of savings from oil production to Alberta's $17 billion!

Alberta and Canada are spending and giving away all our resource revenues without even keeping up with basic infrastructure. Those Alberta PCs sure know how to manage an economy!!!

Is there a lesson here? Maybe we shouldn't let the oil companies run the ****ing country!!!

[chuckChuck]

Even Danny Williams got a better deal for Newfoundland.

[grassfarmer]

Yeah Mustardman I've always found TOM to be a bit of an enigma. With all the patriot talk I can see him fitting in comfortably with the kook, religious right Americans, joining the militia and driving about in his camouflaged combine.
But on the other hand he always solidly backs Governments that remove property rights from citizens….. Strange fellow.

[Hopalong]

Heard James Nolan on CTV weekend Farmgate program.
Agree that his warning is not realistic.
Seems to follow Richard Gray thinking that growers lost huge sums of money by selling at costly basis levels.
Think that was the case with only a few who had not forward contracted and were forced to sell at worst time.

[HFL]

Here I thought by ending the CWB monopoly this Government gave me my property rights back.

[foragefarmer]

Well, all the usual suspects have posted their inept responses and excuses as to why Harper has not fulfilled all his promises during his tender as the PM.

The majority of posters who responded felt the reason Harper has failed at making Canada an "Energy "Superpower" nor being a champion of the "Climate Change" is very simple. They blame Peter Mansbridge, the CBC, and the Liberals. Forget the fact of holding Harper and his Conservative government accountable for not getting the job done. Forget the fact Harper just completed an interview and was caught on film stumbling to give an honest answer to questions Mansbridge asked. The very questions every Canadian is entitled to answers to. No the posters gave the same response the Harper Conservatives always give, deny, divert, lie, and point the finger at everybody else. But what was to be expected, they all receive their talking points directly from the PMO fax machine. That's the privilege you have when your're card carrying Conservative and paying contributors to the Conservative party.