NOVEMBER 20, 2000
HOWARD HILSTROM AND THE REFORM/ALLIANCE:
A LONG HISTORY OF NOT LISTENING TO FARMERS CONTINUES
SWIFT CURRENT, Sask.--In the mid-1990s, the Reform party ignored the wishes of the vast majority of prairie farmers and worked in Parliament to terminate the Crow Benefit. That move has cost farmers billions.
More recently, in the November 11 Western Producer, Reform/Alliance candidate and agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom stated that regardless of the outcome of the CWB directors elections, a Canadian Alliance government would end the CWB's single-desk selling authority. "I'd feel comfortable making the changes, whether it was 100% voluntary supporters or 100% single-desk sellers," said Hilstrom. Economists estimate that such a move would cost farmers more than $265 million annually.
NFU Saskatchewan Board member Stewart Wells called Hilstrom's declaration "a surprising and disappointing act from a party that continues to call itself democratic."
Most recently, on an open-line show, Hilstrom said of the NFU: "I take with a grain of salt what you say about farming in Canada." He then went on to criticize the NFU's views on the causes of the farm crisis. Wells countered: "Well, we currently have record-low grain stocks and record-low prices. Mr. Hilstrom's assumptions about supply and demand are clearly failing to explain the farm income crisis,." Wells continued: "I think that when an organization of thousands of farm families--one that, unlike Hilstrom and his party, correctly predicted that the end of the Crow would lead to rail abandonment and road destruction--puts forward a carefully-documented theory on the causes of the farm crisis, Mr. Hilstrom might at least want to consider it. Mr. Hilstrom, however, in this matter and all other agricultural matters, has unflinching faith in his own wisdom and the ideology that the markets work and he has no need to consult with farmers or treat their opinions with any respect."
Wells concluded: "It is reasonable to expect that if people like Hilstrom are again elected to govern Canada, that they will remain willfully ignorant. After 20 years of deregulation, things have never been worse down on the grain and oilseed farm. Mr. Hilstrom's belief that 'ignorance is strength' is not helpful to farmers or to Canada."
The NFU's report "The Farm Crisis, EU Subsidies, and Agribusiness Market Power" can be accessed at www.nfu.ca
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For More Information:
Stewart Wells, Sask. Board member: (306) 773-6852
Darrin Qualman, Executive Secretary: (306) 652-9465