PUBLICATION:
The Calgary Sun
DATE:
2002.11.01
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Editorial/Opinion
PAGE:
14
COLUMN:
Editorial
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THIS
IS CANADA?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throughout
this editorial, we feel it will be necessary for us to remind you that the
incident we will be referring to occurred here in Canada.
Yesterday, 13 Alberta farmers went to jail in Lethbridge for selling --
and in some cases just donating -- their OWN grain to people in the U.S.
It's
hard to believe, to be sure. After all, this is Canada, a country described in
its own national anthem as "glorious and free."
But if you grow and harvest wheat and barley in the Prairies and certain
pockets of British Columbia, you are not free at all.
Your
membership in the Canadian Wheat Board is mandatory by federal law initially
established as a War Measures Act.
Even
if you can find a price for your legal product that is double what the CWB is
offering to pay you at a fraction of the transportation cost, you are not able
to sell it.
To do so could land you in jail. And that's exactly what has happened to
13 brave and courageous men who decided they would rather make a point about
their lack of freedom by losing even more of it.
At
yesterday's rally, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein said freedom was at the heart of
the farmers' sacrifice.
"Today, Alberta farmers will face punishment for doing what farmers
are supposed to do and that's to raise, harvest and sell their crops," said
Klein to the cheering crowd assembled outside of the Lethbridge courthouse.
"When
decent, hard-working Alberta farmers are willing to take the extreme measure of
going to jail for the sake of fundamental freedoms that other businesses take
for granted, there is something wrong with the laws of the land," said
Klein.
And
he's right, of course. The only thing is, even people from other parts of Canada
in the SAME business are allowed to sell their wheat and barley to whomever they
please. It's just Western farmers who are not.
This is Canada, after all. Why the discrimination?
We applaud the Alberta government plan to launch a constitutional
challenge against the federal government's monopolistic CWB.
Yesterday,
even as these brave farmers were being hauled off to jail, some in handcuffs,
the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the law that barred penitentiary inmates
from voting in federal elections.
So murderers and rapists have the right to vote, but hard-working farmers
in the West don't have the right to sell their own grain to who they want.
Remember, this is Canada. It is to weep.