What?
I still have time. I have three minutes.
My column was dropped permanently the next morning. It was cancelled.
What would cause the paper to fire a prize-winning, very popular op-ed page columnist with four national awards for press column and press editorial in three years?
Again, follow the money.
I refer the committee to the handout “Who Owns the Farm Media in Western Canada?”--if we could please have that circulated--in which I list the directors and their affiliations. Note in particular the name of Brian Hayward, CEO for Agricore, Canada's largest grain handler and feed manufacturer.
In an October 3 letter to a farmer, Chuck Strahl's office said that Western Producer is owned and operated by a private company, Western Producer Publications, in Saskatoon. In fact, Western Producer is owned and operated by a conglomerate, Glacier Ventures International. One of the directors of that company is Brian Hayward, the CEO of Agricore.
The loss of my column in the Western Producer after one phone call from Strahl's office is not about me. It is, most importantly, about the rights of farmers to have an open and honest discussion on farm issues and to have knowledgeable and articulate advocates like me speak out strongly on their behalf. Instead, I too have been muzzled.
Because I was called to give evidence before this committee only a few days ago, I do not have copies of my handout in French. Since, properly, unilingual material cannot be distributed to the committee, I have instead posted it on a special website that I feel should be of interest to this committee. It contains, among other material, an expanded discussion of farm media ownership, an interview that Barb Glen and I had on CBC Radio One in Regina, and the column that was dropped by Western Producer. The website is www.theholmteam.ca. Any baseball fan will recognize the root, root, root for the “holmteam” and all that.
Economists know that when capital concentrates, communities suffer. There's no better example than the agrifood sector. Farmers face this problem all the time. The CWB is critical to offset multinational power and to return equity to farmers and their communities. The Harper government, in lockstep with the interests of American grain farmers and transnational corporations, sees prairie agriculture as just another sector ripe for takeover. Farmers will turn from decision-makers to price-takers. Strong and viable family grain farms will be replaced by mega-farms with farm managers in double-wides.
If Ottawa can override section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act, it can just as easily undermine the legal framework under which other farm commodities operate. It is up to all members of Parliament to put a stop to this nonsense--now.
Thank you.