By Rob Ainsworth and Jean-François Sauvé
Acting through its Canadian and Australian Privy Councilors, the British Crown has launched a coordinated assault to destroy both the Canadian and Australian Wheat Boards, to the benefit of its assets in the international grain cartel. Combined, the two nations account for a stunning 65% of global wheat exports, control of which would give the Crown and its food cartel unchallenged dominance over world wheat prices and supplies.
As documented in this and in an accompanying article on the case of Australia, the assault on the two nations’ wheat producers is moving in lockstep. Single desk wheat boards (export monopolies) were established in both nations in the 1930s to protect their respective farmers, and to guarantee national food supplies. In 1998, under pressure from dissatisfied farmers, the Canadian government changed the composition of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) – which controls 50% of world wheat exports – to allow farmers more direct control over its operations, albeit without handing over complete operational autonomy. In early 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government tried to ram through a law which would have stripped the CWB of its single desk. Then, as part of a prolonged campaign of subversion, on October 5, Queen Elizabeth II’s Canadian Governor General made an almost unprecedented public intervention into the political fray with an “Order in Council” aimed at destroying the CWB. Meanwhile, in Australia, the government, in 1999, corporatized the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) preparatory to its being privatized (which has not yet officially happened), and, in December 2006, the government of Prime Minister John Howard stripped the AWB of its single desk export monopoly.
The Strategic Setting
A 1997 study by Executive Intelligence Review[1] documents how the international financial oligarchy centered in the British and Dutch royal families, known as the “Club of the Isles” since it was established in its modern form at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries by Britain’s King Edward VII (the “Lord of the Isles”), controls a preponderance of the world’s most powerful corporations in raw materials (including mining, petroleum and food), in finance, and in the media, among other fields. The Club’s assets were estimated by insiders at US$9 trillion in 1997, and have grown phenomenally since then. Merely a few of the names in its corporate apparatus include: Mining: Rio Tinto Zinc, BHP, CVRD, Anglo-American, De Beers, Lonrho, and Barrick Gold; Oil: Royal Dutch Shell, BP; Banking: Bank of England, HSBC, JP Morgan & Co., Lazard Brothers & Co., N.M. Rothschild & Sons; Food: Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Louis Dreyfus, and Bunge and Born.
Coordinated by Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council in London, with its House of Orange cousins in the Netherlands, the Club rests upon the long-standing British imperial tradition of integrating its corporate elite with government ministers and the top echelons of Britain’s intelligence services.[2] This Anglo-Dutch entity is the primary force promoting globalization, neo-liberalism and the end of nation states as the preeminent political institutions on the planet; its fronts include such institutions as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, and similar “one-worldist” entities.
At issue is control of the world’s strategic raw materials in a time of global financial crisis. As the US dollar faces imminent collapse, the world’s leading banks are confronted with trillions of dollars worth of worthless assets, be it from the collapsing US and British housing markets, the $119 trillion derivatives bubble, or the multi-trillion dollar bubble being created through a frenzy of highly leveraged corporate takeovers. Meanwhile the escalating violence in Southwest Asia, orchestrated by the networks of self-professed British asset Henry A. Kissinger and his pupil, Vice-President Dick Cheney, threatens the world with the grim prospect of a prolonged religious war.
A new world financial architecture will be created from the ashes of the current floating exchange-rate system. The as yet unresolved question is who will determine the nature of the new arrangement, which will either be an agreement amongst sovereign nation states, or be dictated by private financier power. The nation state remains the most powerful instrument for good known to humankind. Long recognizing this, the British Crown/Club of the Isles, by subverting and blackmailing nation states through globalization and hegemonic control over the world’s strategic raw materials, hopes to be the power which defines the new financial superstructure. It is in this context that the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and other Crown agents, as detailed below, are being deployed against the CWB. Once the solidarity of Canada’s greatest co-op has been destroyed, the international grain cartel (US-based Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland; EU-based Louis Dreyfus, and Bunge and Born), which controls the transportation and distribution infrastructure, will be free to crush the independent Western Canadian farmer and to secure control of two of the world’s most important bread baskets, in Canada, and in Australia.
The Assault on the CWB
Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl have trumpetted their intent to dismantle the CWB, established in 1935 and composed of 75,000 farmers in Western Canada (where Canada’s wheat is grown), and to replace it with a CWB II, which would offer “marketing choice” to Canada’s wheat and barley farmers. Currently, all such farmers must, by law, sell their produce to the CWB, under the single desk marketing system. The government’s “free enterprise” sophistry ignores the wide ranging benefits which the Wheat Board’s single desk provides to its members, such as procuring, on average, $350 to $400 million in additional annual profits due to increased bargaining power and marketing directly to the end consumer. When other benefits, such as freight rate caps, are included, these extra profits approach $800 million. Instead, as stated in the 2006 Conservative Party Platform, the government promises to “give farmers the freedom to make their own marketing and transportation decisions and to direct, structure, and voluntarily participate in producer organizations,” such as the CWB.
By claiming to offer farmers “the freedom to choose,” Harper implies that the Wheat Board will survive his intended changes. He lies. Professor Murray Fulton, of the University of Saskatchewan, conducted a study, CWB in an Open Market, examining the potential impact of introducing a dual-market system. In the abstract of his report he writes:
The most likely impact of removing the single-desk selling powers is that the CWB will cease to exist. The elimination of the CWB would transform the Canadian grains industry, with the impact of this change felt in virtually every part of the system. The changes that would accompany the loss of the CWB’s single desk selling power would make the Canadian system more and more like that in the United States. It is expected, for instance, that grain company and railroad competition would fall, that producer cars and short line railways would suffer, that the current freight revenue cap would disappear, and that less value would be returned to farmers. Once these changes are made they are irreversible – it would be virtually impossible to go back and restore the system to what is currently in place [emphasis added].[3]
A 2005 poll conducted by Ipsos-Reid found that 48% of wheat farmers preferred their current relationship with the CWB while 46% supported the creation of a “dual market”. However, the same poll reported that 64% of wheat farmers supported the current CWB over an open market in which the CWB would no longer exist. At the website of Alberta Beef, an ongoing poll, places farmer support of the current Wheat Board arrangement above the ninetieth percentile! The implications of these polls reveal the cynical methods of the government. By promoting the “dual market” and “freedom of choice” while at the same time de facto proclaiming the continued existence of a merely diminished CWB, Harper and Strahl are engaging in a gross attempt to manipulate and swindle Western Canadian farmers.
Today, Canada produces 12% of the world wheat supply, but accounts for up to 50% of world exports. The regulated single-desk CWB is an essential institution for western farmers. It provides high value-added services and a powerful selling advantage to those farmers, helping them market their products and get a fair return for their crops. All sales revenues ($4 to $6 billion annually), less operating costs of 5-7%, are returned directly to the farmers. Of great import is the CWB’s method of direct marketing, that is, dealing directly with the end purchaser, and cutting the grain cartel out of immense profits. The Crown’s intention to dismantle the CWB, for the benefit of the international financiers who dominate the world food supply, is a matter of the utmost importance for the sovereignty of our nation. It is a threat to our national security.
The destruction of the CWB will expose Canada’s farmers to the Hobbesian world of the so-called “free market”, which is increasingly dominated by a multinational cartel, of which four companies alone control 73% of the international grain trade: Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Louis Dreyfus, and Bunge.[4] With the new arrangement farmers would be forced to negotiate individually with the grain cartels and at the same time compete against one another, thus heralding the end of the family farm in Western Canada. The inevitable result of the government’s policy will be either widespread consolidation into a small number of giant factory farms and the consequent destruction of Western Canadian society, or the highly unlikely issuance of massive subsidies to maintain our family farms as the multinationals force prices lower than the cost of production.
History of the CWB
“Canada could not have existed without the western wheat economy,” wrote Dr. John Herd Thompson, in a 1996 study on the history of the CWB.[5] This was true at the founding of our nation, and it is still true today. Because of the importance of agriculture, the wheat trade has long been regulated. The precursor of the CWB was created in 1917 to alleviate the difficulties which farmers were experiencing then at the hands of middlemen and market speculators. The CWB of today was later born out of both the desperation of the Great Depression and the prior experience of pooling and joint selling in the western provinces.
For much of its history the CWB functioned as a federal government agency. However, in 1998 the government changed its management composition, allowing farmers to run the corporation directly, while ensuring a certain amount of oversight to protect the public interest. This oversight is now, in a gross abuse of power, being exploited to ultimately destroy the CWB. The government established a board of fifteen directors which “assumed overall responsibility to direct and manage the business and affairs of the CWB.” Under this system, ten directors are elected by the farmers, four are appointed by the government, while the President and CEO “is appointed by the federal government in consultation with the Board.”[6] The government’s role, apart from appointing these five directors, is supposed to be limited to reviewing and approving certain financial aspects of the CWB’s operations, and guaranteeing its pre-harvest payments to farmers, its borrowing and its export sales;[7] but technically, as ex-President and CEO Adrian Measner has observed, the 1935 Canadian Wheat Board Act “also gives the federal government the authority, through the auspices of the [Governor General in Council], to give direction to the CWB as to the manner in which it operates. However, this provision has rarely been used.” More importantly, he emphasizes “that over the long history of the CWB this provision has never, prior to 2006, been used over the CWB’s objections [emphasis added].”[8]
Stephen Harper vs. the CWB
In May 2006, Bill C-300 was introduced into the federal Parliament with the intention of creating a loophole to the requirement in the Canadian Wheat Board Act of 1935 (the Act) that all Western Canadian wheat and barley producers sell their grain to the CWB. The loophole would have permitted farmers to sell their grain directly to grain handling companies such as Agricore United (controlled by ADM) and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which is allied with ADM subsidiary Töpfer. This action, on the part of the government, was illegal, as expressed in section 47.1 of the Act, which stipulates that, by law, before the government can introduce legislative changes to the Act, it must consult the Wheat Board directly and the farmers must approve the proposed changes by a plebiscite. The government did neither. Fortunately the bill was defeated by the opposition parties, who united against such blatant injustice.
Then, only weeks later, Minister Strahl refused to approve the CWB’s annual corporate plan because it was “based on a strategic direction that envisages the maintenance of the single desk.” Strahl stated that before he would approve the Plan, the CWB would have to “delete any reference to…the maintenance of the single desk, and any activities in 2006-07 that…are geared to the maintenance of the single desk.”[9] The Minister made these demands in full knowledge and complete disregard for the law.
Undaunted by serious opposition from farmers and a majority of the Parliament, Harper and Strahl pushed ahead with the Conservative agenda. On October 5, 2006 the Governor General, “on the recommendation of the Minister of Agriculture,” issued an Order in Council, directing “The Canadian Wheat Board to conduct its operations…in the following manner:
- it shall not expend funds, directly or indirectly, on advocating the retention of its monopoly powers, including the expenditure of funds for advertising, publishing or market research; and
- it shall not provide funds to any other person or entity to enable them to advocate the retention of the monopoly powers of The Canadian Wheat Board.”
This directive has effectively placed a gag order on the CWB, preventing it from defending itself, although the CWB is free to promote the government’s position! This Directive is a de facto violation of one of the most important principles in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms: the right to free speech.
The timing of this despotic Order in Council coincided with the CWB’s biannual elections, thus sabotaging the CWB at a critical moment in its history. Simultaneously, the government campaigned aggressively for its preferred candidates, spending tens of thousands of dollars, while Strahl crisscrossed the western provinces in their support. Meanwhile, Harper and Strahl unleashed a further scheme. On October 17, fully six weeks after the inauguration of the election period, Strahl announced the removal of 16,000 of the 44,578 names from the voters list without consulting the CWB. These measures, happily, did not induce the desired results; the farmers overwhelmingly chose candidates who supported the single desk.
In the meantime, the government had replaced three of its own directors with men who were openly against the single desk, hoping to destabilize the co-op and intimidate the farmer-elected directors into accepting the government’s free-market policies. The government has now effectively split the Wheat Board, with eight directors supporting the single desk, countered by seven government agents.
Strahl’s most recent act of sabotage was the unprecedented firing of CEO and President, Adrian Measner, explicitly because he refused to support the government’s policy of eliminating the Wheat Board’s monopoly. In an interview with one of the authors, a current CWB Director asserted that “Adrian Measner was fired because he upheld the law.”
The National Citizens Coalition
Some of the most ferocious attacks against the CWB come from an organization called the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), which claims to be a grassroots organization, but which is actually an extreme right-wing think tank which promotes free enterprise and free trade, whose former president is none other than PM Stephen Harper. It is virulently anti-union, anti-regulation, anti-“big government”, anti-public health care, and so on. It was originally founded in 1967 by millionaire insurance executive Colin M. Brown to prevent the creation of Canada’s world-renowned public health care system. On its website the NCC praises itself for having led politicians to privatize Air Canada and Petro-Canada. The current chairman of the NCC is Colin T. Brown, the son of the founder.
The NCC is part of a nest of right-wing organizations in Canada (and in Australia) in the stable of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), the British Crown thinktank perhaps best known for designing the holocaust of privatizations in Britain under Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher, and which is the “mother organization” for the whole deregulation/privatization movement worldwide, in which the nation-state’s assets are sold off for a song to “private enterprise”. The NCC’s current Vice-President, Gerry Nichols, for instance, is a co-conspirator of the Freedom Project in Canada with Dr. Steven Horwitz, a fanatical MPS member, while the recipient of the NCC’s 1992 Colin M. Brown Freedom Award was Michael Walker, a member of the MPS’s board of directors and a leading light in the the neo-liberal Fraser Institute, joining the select company of Conrad Black, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and other illustrious names of the far right in Canadian and international politics.
The NCC has never released a list of its board of directors, its members, or its contributors; however, its influence is extensive and its patrons, judging from the NCC’s policies, are powerful indeed.
The NCC founded and financed a group called Ontarians for Responsible Government, a lobby group that played an important role in 1995 in electing the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris in Ontario. Harris went on to gouge the Ontario economy with colossal austerity measures, brutally slashing budgets and funding, attacking organized labor such as Ontario’s teachers and public servants and causing profound damage to the health care and education systems. Harris is also largely responsible for Ontario’s looming infrastructure crisis: the current Liberal government is facing short-term, unavoidable investments topping $100 billion.
Prime Minister Harper was president of the NCC from 1998 to 2001, but his relationship with the NCC began much earlier. Harper had advocated the policies of the NCC at least as early as 1993, when he was a member of the right-wing Reform Party. In a 1997 interview, Harper said, “the agenda of the NCC was a guide to me as the founding policy director of Reform.” When Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance Party (predecessor of the current Conservative Party), he received the NCC’s 2002 “Freedom Award”.
An October 31 article in the Edmonton Sun, written by NCC affiliate Neil Waugh attacked the Wheat Board as being an “Evil Empire,” and “sinister.” A December 21 article in the Calgary Sun, written by another NCC affiliate, Licia Corbella, claimed that the CWB makes the farmer a “second-class citizen,” also claiming that the fight over the CWB was about freedom! Corbella portrays the CWB as a literal dictatorship, reducing western farmers to a state of abject peonage. These sorts of attacks, as well as billboard and radio campaigns costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, are run-of-the-mill for the NCC.
The Mulroney Connection
The anti-CWB Calgary Sun and the Edmonton Sun, along with dozens of other daily and weekly publications, are owned by Sun Media, which, in turn, is owned by Quebecor Inc., one of the biggest media conglomerates in Canada, posting annual revenues over $10 billion. Sun Media’s publications are known for their rightwing outlook. Quebecor is controlled by the Péladeau family. Brian Mulroney, the Prime Minister who brought the FTA and NAFTA to Canada, is the Chairman of the Board of Quebecor and its subsidiary Quebecor World, the second largest printing company on the globe. Mulroney is also the mentor and closest advisor of Quebecor President and CEO, Pierre Karl Péladeau.
Mulroney is one of the most powerful men in Canada. He holds numerous influential Directorships, among them a spot on the International Advisory Council of JP Morgan Chase & Co. along with Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Schultz. He also sits alongside business magnate Peter Munk on the board of Barrick Gold, whose International Advisory Board features former U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Mulroney is a protégé and business associate of Paul Desmarais Sr., who controls Power Corp., one of Canada’s most dominant companies, which controls assets in the range of $280 billion. He is also an associate of the New York Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Bilderberg Group. Finally, Mulroney sits on the Board of ADM, one of the companies which would benefit most from the destruction of the CWB.
It is also noteworthy that during the 1988 federal election, which was fought over free trade, the National Citizens Coalition spent $19 million dollars to ensure that Mulroney’s Conservative Party would be victorious.
The Revealing Case of Wendy Holm
On October 26, 2006, before the House of Commons Select Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, Wendy Holm, an award-winning Western Canadian journalist, economist and agrologist, made the following testimony:
As an agrologist, I went to Saskatoon on July 27 to stand with Canada’s farmers in support of the Canadian Wheat Board. I felt that they were right and that professionals should come forward and say so. That afternoon I sat in a packed room and listened to farm leaders from across Canada defend the Wheat Board and the clout it gives to farmers. Later that afternoon, Chuck Strahl emerged from the invitation-only meetings he had been having across the street, with those who agreed with the Harper government’s views on the Canadian Wheat Board – to hold a press conference.
I attended as a freelance columnist with the Western Producer, and asked the minister whether his government was prepared to implement dual marketing without a supporting vote of producers and in violation of section 47.1 of the Act. I then returned to B.C. to write my column.
That Monday, I was about to file my August Western Producer column when I received a phone call from my editor…who seemed shaken. She said they’d received a call from Chuck Strahl’s office – and from one other person – suggesting that my presence at the rally indicated bias on the part of Western Producer. My monthly column, which had appeared on the op-ed page the second issue of every month for the past 12 years…was dropped permanently the next morning. It was cancelled.
It turns out that Western Producer is owned by Glacier Ventures International (GVI), which controls dozens of community newspapers across the western provinces, and which bought up all of the Canadian media of the Hollinger International corporation of Conrad Black, a financial angel of the international neocon set. GVI has become “the primary source of essential agricultural information for Western Canadian farmers and ranchers.” GVI has specialized in the agricultural industry and, although its revenues are not exceptionally great, the influence exerted upon western public opinion by such media concentration is obvious. In fact, Holm reveals that many of the newspapers owned by GVI are “the primary source of information for the community they serve.”
The source of the second of the two calls which ended Holm’s career at Western Producer most likely traces back to Glacier’s Board of Directors, on which sits none other than Brian Hayward, CEO of Agricore United, the largest grain handler in Western Canada, and subsidiary of Archer Daniels Midland.
The Eminence Grise
Despite there being numerous players in the world grain trade, which would benefit from the destruction of the CWB; despite the funds from the big players which have likely made their way into the coffers of Harper’s campaign war chest; during the course of this investigation one company in particular has continually surfaced: Archer Daniels Midland.
ADM is headed by G. Allen Andreas, who holds the chairmanship of ADM’s Board. Andreas is extremely well connected in the world of power and high finance, as his bio on ADM’s website indicates:
He is a member of the supervisory board of the A.C. Töpfer International Group…and on the Board of…Agricore United in Canada. He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission…the World Economic Forum, the G100. Mr. Andreas serves as a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group [through which he has close connections to Paul Desmarais Sr. – ed.].
Previous research by EIR revealed the following. In 1974, ADM entered into a price-fixing scheme that overcharged the U.S. government $19 million in sales of soy-fortified food to the Food for Peace program. ADM was convicted. In 1976, the company pleaded no contest to federal charges that it had systematically short-weighted and misgraded federally subsidized grain that was being shipped abroad. ADM has an 80% stake in A.C. Töpfer International, one of the middle powers in the grain trade, and one which has allied itself with the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
ADM is also the biggest North American player in the current Ethanol craze, which threatens to take untold hectares of arable land out of useful food production and dedicate it to producing a type of fuel which costs more energy to produce than it supplies. This has not, however, stopped Prime Minister Harper from calling for the annual production of four billion liters of ethanol by 2010. This plan would not only enrich the grain cartel, but will marginalize the importance of the CWB on the prairies as the wheat crop diminishes in size and consequence.
Should the CWB find its single desk monopoly annulled, Crown agent ADM, as well as the other multinationals would stand to make hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars at the expense of our nation’s family farms. It is no surprise, therefore, that the coordinated, multi-flank assault herein described is taking place. It is an operation invisible from the bottom, yet if you follow the chain of command upward, the picture becomes clear. In a way, Licia Corbella was correct when she stated that the fight over the CWB was about freedom; yet, not in her infantile fashion. Rather, it is a question of the deliberate subversion of our national interests by the very institution which claims to be our head! It is a question of whether Canadians will be free to pursue fulfilling and productive lives, contributing to the wealth and happiness of future generations.
The Real Power: Her Majesty’s Privy Council
The extremely unusual intervention by Canada’s Governor General in October against the CWB reveals the hidden hand behind the plot to destroy both it and the Australian Wheat Board. The head of state for Canada and Australia, as for all nations of the British Commonwealth (the new name for the British Empire) is Queen Elizabeth II, who rules via her Privy Council in London. The fiction is that Her Majesty’s power, as that of the Governors General who rule Canada and Australia in her name, is merely a quaint ceremonial relic of times past. However, when the stakes are high, the fist in the velvet glove comes crashing down, as it did when her Governor General Sir John Kerr, in 1975, sacked Gough Whitlam, the popularly-elected Prime Minister of Australia, or when Canada’s Governor General assaulted the CWB in October.
The prime ministers of most Commonwealth countries are Privy Councilors, as is Australian PM John Howard, who has just crushed the Australian Wheat Board. However, Canada unlike Australia, has its very own Privy Council, and therefore is, if anything, held in an even tighter imperial vise, reflecting Canada’s historic role as a bastion of British imperial attempts to destroy the United States.[10] In typical British understatement, the Canadian Privy Council’s website describes how it works:
“The Privy Council Office (PCO) provides essential advice and support to the Prime Minister and Cabinet. … The Privy Council Office (PCO) is the hub of public service support to the Prime Minister and Cabinet and its decision-making structures. Led by the Clerk of the Privy Council, PCO facilitates the smooth and effective operations of Cabinet and the Government of Canada through the work of the PCO secretariats. PCO helps to clearly articulate and implement the Government’s policy agenda and to coordinate timely responses to issues facing the government and the country.”
And one of those “issues” for which the PCO is clearly providing “timely responses” – as through its Governor General – is the destruction of the CWB. And so we also find that former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the chairman of the media conglomerate Quebecor, which is leading the crusade to destroy the CWB, is one of Her Majesty’s Privy Councilors.
Canada Must Be Sovereign
As this article is being written a profound political paradigm-shift is occurring in the United States, propelled by the leadership of Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche Youth Movement. The Democratic Party is beginning to respond to a groundswell, which is building amongst the people to rid the country of the pestilence of the Bush Administration. The implications of this shift are enormous, for without a resurgence of those principles which are the foundation of the Republic, neither the United States, nor any other nation with aspirations of sovereignty, will have a future. Such are the times in which we live.
In the advent of an impeachment, Canada will be faced with the opportunity to forge a new relationship with the United States: one based upon mutual respect and the co-operative development of our continent, free of the oligarchy’s machinations. This future will include great projects, such as high speed electric rail systems to replace our aging rail infrastructure, and ambitious water management projects, such as NAWAPA[11], to vastly expand our already prodigious agricultural output.
With the usurious debt payments made over the past five years ($254 billion[12]), Canada could have financed almost the entire construction of a new continental double-tracked high speed rail system, while reaping the benefits of enhanced transportation, job creation, increased physical productivity and so on. Should the nation take up NAWAPA, the prairies could see grain production soar from access to plentiful fresh water, drawn by a series of canals from the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers. Not only would huge amounts of fresh water be available, but thousands of megawatts of cheap energy will be produced (perhaps to power our new rail system!) for all kinds of industrial and productive purposes. With such types of proposals, the grounds may be laid for long term development of the entire North American economy.
What is the role of the farmer in all of this? Reflecting upon our nation’s history, it is clear that many of our most successful and progressive policies, as well as regressive, have come from, or centered upon, the farming sector. While such people do have a tangible sense of their own contribution to the well-being and progress of society, at the same time, there is often a tendency for people, not simply farmers, to fall into the mire of regionalism and single issues, placing immediate self-interest before the common interest of the nation, with the entire nation suffering as a result. The agricultural community faces the same challenge as the tattered remnants of our industrial sector: how to stand unified against the oppressive might of a usurious system dominated by cartels. One vital cause of the ongoing collapse of family-based farming in Canada lies in the failure of farmers to fully assume the mantle of citizenship, and to organize their fellow citizens to oppose and replace those policies which are ruining the nation. The agricultural community must make that choice: either to stand firm on principle in a fight for the common good, or perish, divided over local and regional issues. Until the common good is placed highest in the mind, our family farms will continue to disappear. On the other hand, what can save our nation is our sense of citizenship – of the individual’s role in history – which can still be found in many who are engaged in productive forms of labour: the sense of immortality, that what we do with our lives will have some durable value to future generations. Thus, in these times, when our national institutions are besieged, when the government has become a puppet of the moneyed men, and the rule of law is cast in doubt, it falls to those with an idea of the future to rally their countrymen not simply to oppose a policy, but to propose a workable alternative, in this case to the calamitous logic of globalization.
It is only in the context of a general financial reorganization and assertion of national sovereignty, in partnership with nations such as the U.S.A., Russia, China and Germany, that Canadians may rest secure. The age of kings and oligarchs is past. We owe nothing to that parasitical cabal; we owe nothing to the Crown. The Crown has been the worst enemy and perpetual bane of our sovereignty, viewing Canada as simply a territory to be looted for raw materials and used as a geo-political asset against the United States.
During December, the CWB launched a court challenge to overturn the Governor General’s intervention. Let us, in the same spirit, finally abandon this colonial past and look to the future, which is heavy with expectation – of development, progress and the unleashing of our once-remarkable industrial energies; yet only if we commit ourselves to the current principled struggle for liberty unfolding in the United States, as well as in Canada.
[1] The true story behind the fall of the House of Windsor. EIR Special Report, 1997.
[2] Engdahl, F. William. A Century of War. Dr. Böttiger Verlags-GmbH, 1993. page 15
[3] See www.kis.usask.ca
[4] http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/judicial/pdf/affidavit_ameasner.pdf
[5] http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/judicial/pdf/measner/Tab_1.pdf
[6] http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/judicial/pdf/affidavit_ameasner.pdf
[7] Farmers may request early payment of up to 85% of the anticipated value of their produce.
[8] http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/judicial/pdf/affidavit_ameasner.pdf
[9] http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/hot/judicial/pdf/measner/Tab_20.pdf
[10] See Chaitkin, Anton. Treason in America. Executive Intelligence Review, 1985
[11] North American Water And Power Alliance
[12] http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/govt01b.htm?sdi=debt%20payments
