national
farmers union
SASKATOON, Sask-The National Farmers Union will continue to inform farmers about what is happening at Winnipeg meetings intended to implement the Estey Report. NFU officials will not comply with increasingly strict restrictions on what participants can reveal about these increasingly secretive meetings.
The most recent copy of the Steering Committee minutes state that : "...working group chairs and their members have decided that their respective groups will not conduct interviews, leaving it to the Steering Committee Chair to be the media contact person."
Nettie Wiebe, who represented the NFU on the Commercial Relations technical working group, said that: "This is a complete misrepresentation. Our working group agreed that, while we would be careful not to misconstrue the positions of the other participants, we would be free to talk to the media and relate the events of our meetings."
The National Farmers Union has requested from the beginning that all meetings be open to the media and public. In a May 5 letter to Minister Collenette, the NFU stated that any transportation consultations "must be open to the public and media. Public discussions are essential to accountability. If farmers, government, railways, and grain companies are to achieve meaningful and positive changes to the grain transportation and handling system, then reforms must be crafted in full view of all affected parties, including farmers."
Fred Tait, NFU Vice-President and Steering Committee representative, stated: "It is the responsibility of farm organizations to report to their members through meetings and to report to farmers as a whole through the press. The Minister chose to hold his consultation process at an extremely bad time-beginning during seeding and ending during harvest. This move drastically limits farmers' ability to participate effectively. He also chose an extremely short time frame. And he has chosen to exclude observers and the media from the process. If he now decrees that farm organizations should be restricted in their ability to talk to farmers, one can only conclude that his intent is to have this process over and changes in place before farmers learn what is going on."
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