By and large Canada Day was slagged from the Right in a demagogic hatred not seen since the debates during the Viet Nam war in the American press. And at that time the Right in the U.S. responded with the simplistic 'Love It or Leave It'.
It seems approriate then to adopt this slogan and apply it to the current crop of virulent Canada bashing right wingers in Canada; those who are columnists in the mainstream, read right-wing, press especially the Sun newpapers and the National Post. The irony is that they get paid for their calumny. America is soooo much better than Canada, but their paycheques are made in Canada, and their health care and social benefits they despise are still delivered to them regardless of their opinions.
Canada basher Ezra Levant's Calgary Sun column; Canada Day looked like a Liberal campaign ad made his comment appropriately on July 4th, not July 1st. Showing his Canadaphobia is merely good old Americaphilia it comes down to the simplistic arguement that goes Canada=The Liberal Party.
Levant whose an out and out Republican like his other Calgary pals Anders and Kenney, wants not only deep intergration with the United States but would like to be American. He even goes so far in his All Things American are good by calling his national publication the Western Standard after the American Conservative magazine the Weekly Standard.
Typical of the right wing in Canada who once upon a time opposed the Liberals under Trudeau they embraced being Anglophiles, all that was British was good.
Levant hearkens back to this time honoured tradition of being an apologist for the good old days of British colonialism (the specious arguement being that
Canada would not be a country if the Brits had not defeated the French and that they 'allowed' us independence under the Act of Westminister) .
In his column he says: "Once upon a time, Canada Day -- when it was called Dominion Day, when we had our old flag, not Lester Pearson's new flag, in Liberal colours -- celebrated what really did make our country great".
It's not just the old union jack or the red ensign that Levant embraces but that other fine Anglo American tradtion; child labour, that so offended Charles Dickens.Decisions on young workers and sour gas deserve cheers
Like the vast majority of Alberta right wingers, Ezra is an Anglo-American apologist by ideology (he was an intern at the Fraser Insitute the voice of the neo-conservative agenda in Canada) while being a Canadian by the accident of birth. He and his ilk's final solution, to what he sees as a degenerate left wing Canada, is to call for Alberta to Seperate from the rest of Canada. Forgetting of course that this American identity is strictly a Calgary phenomena, being the largest American city north of the 49th parallel. Those of us in Redmonton would then demand the right to Seperate from a Seperate Alberta, which true to form would continue on its right wing path of being a one party state in the tradition of Mussolini and Stalin.
Meanwhile not to be outdone, in the city of Toronto another Sun columnist Michael Coren, a born again papist, Anglophile and proud homophobe, denounces Canada in his column: Canada Day? Bah, Humbug!
where he says: "The notion that this is the greatest country on Earth and that our cities are "world class" is, frankly, quite ludicrous. We have little history, few passable museums, mediocre galleries and minimal national pride".
Well there's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, hard to have national pride when those in your nation, the so called patriots continue to bash it in favour of the good old days of British Colonialism or by embracing modern era American Imperialism. Our neo-cons ideology is a mix of bad old Socreds and sad sack Republicans.
And like Levant that is what Coren says; Brits and Americans good Canadians bad: "That's not difficult, of course. We make dreadful television and movies, whether they are funny or not. There are diluted versions of American and British programs and politically tendentious films that are instantly identifiable. They're characterized by bad acting and unfailingly lugubrious plots that often include a hackneyed and out-of-context gay relationship.".
The fact that we make very good TV and have long supplied the humourless Americans with their funniest comedians, since the early days of Hollywood to Saturday Night Live, seems lost on Coren. And with his predicatable homophobia, he dismisses Kids in the Hall was a funny series in both Canada and the United States. But hey why worry about facts when you are bashing Canada and gays in one breathe.
The columnists are not alone in their hatred of Canada, as I pointed out in a recent blog comment on Medicine Hat MP Monte Solberg who expressed much the same senitiments after the same sex bill passed.
Jim Elves at Blogs Canada exposes the rants of the right wing Canada Bashers in blog space with his blog article Calling on the Right to Quash Canada-haters .
Like their paid brethern in Canada's right wing press these supporters of all things Conservative, once again come up with the solution to their woes is to take Alberta out of Canada. They love the one party state in Alberta but hate the one party State in Ottawa, which is actually now a minority government something Albertans have never tried.
What they hate is not a country, not a government in Ottawa, hell when Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives were in power they hated them as well.
Nope they hate Canadians, they want to be Americans.
We Canadians are basically a peoples who embrace a social democratic ethic, that we support individual rights when they are not only good for the individual but for the good of the community as well. The right wing is opposed to all that makes us Canadian.
Thus they oppose gun control in principle, despite the fact that the majority of Canadians approve of gun control and despite the fact it works according to Stats Canada; Gun deaths down in Canada.
And they fail to see that the Federal government billion dollar boondoogle over the gun registry is because it embraced the neo-conservative ideology of privatization and private public partnerships, and because they did not expect the provinces like Alberta, not to buy in (ok that was stupid, but the point is that cost all of us part of the billion).
These yahoos on the right in Alberta have a history that is ridden with anti-french, anti-semitic, anti-native, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-union traditions. A right wing based in the old Social Credit party and the KKK in Alberta.
Federally they became Preston Mannings Reform Party/Alliance/Conservative Party, they are Albertans first, Canadians second. Which much to their own chagrin puts them in the same camp as the Quebecois, whom they bash out of jealousy for their asymetrical autonomy.
This then is the politics of the right in Canada as embraced by the Levants and Corens, and by the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party of Harper. Simply put they are not just pro-American, but virulently anti-Canadian and anti- Quebec because we are both Social Democratic countries.
As long as the majority of Canadians and Quebecois embrace the politics of the left by voting for the NDP, Liberals and BQ, the Conservatives will remain a regional party of Alberta. Ralphs party on the federal stage. A party that wanted to create a firewall around Calgary but disguised their aristotilian city state aspirations for an American outpost in the heartland of Canada's energy market by calling for annexation of the entire province.
Albertan's who are conservative never think of themselves as Canadians, to do so would mean we would have to share our wealth with the rest of the country, rather than horde it in a mean spirited way. The Alberta Government and its Federal arm; the Conservative pary, want deep integration with the United States, hence their support for the right wing rump that calls for seperation.
Since the right wing is so concerned with democracy and applauded the American invasion of Iraq to bring down a dictatorship and give the people a democracy perhaps they will applaud if the Federal government did the same thing in Alberta to secure the oil reserves for all Canadians, and to bring democracy to the oppressed and exploited peoples of Alberta. But somehow I don't think so.
Once upon a time the conspiratorial right wing published a manifesto of the new right in America it was entitled "None Dare Call It Treason". The new right in Alberta has supped deeply at the cup of this kind of politics and encourage if not call for Alberta seperation outright. But I dare to call it what it is; Sedition and treason agianst all that is Canadian, and the rantings of Levant, Coren, Solberg and the bloggers continues to prove this time after time.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query AMERICAN ALBERTA. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query AMERICAN ALBERTA. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Thursday, October 14, 2021
Supported by Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA, Free Alberta Strategy released
Wed., October 13, 2021
Wed., October 13, 2021
Published September 28, the Free Alberta Strategy is a policy paper written by Airdrie MLA and lawyer, Rob Anderson, University of Calgary political scientist, Barry Cooper, and constitutional lawyer, Derek From, in cooperation with the Alberta Institute.
The paper has two key objectives, which include establishing provincial sovereignty within Canada, and the end of equalization payments to have-not provinces.
“We believe that Alberta needs to declare itself a sovereign jurisdiction within Canada,” said Anderson. “Part of that is to pass a piece of legislation called the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which specifically states that the province of Alberta will not enforce federal laws that are unfair, that unfairly attack the province of Alberta, or that are outside of the jurisdiction of the federal jurisdiction of Ottawa. An example of that would be the carbon tax. If the legislature feels that the carbon taxes are an unconstitutional attack on Alberta and on our jurisdictional rights as a province, then we would simply say, under the Alberta Sovereignty Act, that he will not be enforcing that law within the boundaries of Alberta.”
The paper does not advocate for complete separation from Canada, points out Anderson, who believes that separatism is another option Albertans are tired of hearing of as the proposed only alternative to doing nothing about what is outlined in the strategy.
“The main issues that I'm hearing is, first of all, the lack of resource movement, is the fact that that Albertans are the best in the world at taking risk and safely extracting oil and gas are unable to get work unable to get work at the pay they used to, or they have to go hundreds of miles away to find work, and all the time the demand for oil and gas is increasing. So that would be the main one,” said Drew Barnes, MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat. “Secondly, the fact that Alberta is such a cash cow to the rest of Canada, large parts of that through equalization, and the fact that equalization, and this money transfer is unfair in terms of giving some provinces, you know, sovereign funds as big as Alberta's. It's given them cheaper services. And it has created a problem where some provinces have not tried to increase their revenues or develop their resources, because they want to continue to collect equalization. It's an unfair system that hasn't worked well for anyone.”
Barnes noted a strong frustration in his constituency in the wake of the federal election, and said that “people are frustrated that elections are decided, you know, before we even finished counting our votes here.” Barnes said that seeing legacy parties adopt strategies to “keep Quebec and Ontario happy rather than protect the individual Alberta” definitely fanned the flames in the area.
“It starts with the fact that in Cypress-Medicine Hat, too many, too many of us are not able to work in the oil and gas industry, because of the fact that, you know, Ottawa has blocked pipelines, and that needs to change. Secondly, you know, the fact that, you know, taxes are so high in Canada, and the federal government does so little for us. People realize that there has to be a better system and opportunity for hardworking people and hardworking families to keep more of their own money. So they have more choices,” said Barnes.
There is confidence that with this sovereignty, Alberta would be fine operating on a much more individual scale, said Anderson.
“I will put my belief in Alberta, governing itself over Ottawa governing Alberta any day of the week,” said Anderson. “Obviously, there's going to be times when the government of Alberta doesn't do a great job. But that is a rare occurrence in comparison to the absolute gong show. That is the federal government in Ottawa and specifically, as it relates to Ottawa to Ottawa is consistent attacks on Alberta's energy and agricultural sectors. It's been unrelenting for the last 50 years. It doesn't stop. And so, you know, if there are from time to time, obviously provincial governments are going to screw up but at least at the very least, they have Alberta's best interests at heart. You cannot say that about Ottawa.”
Anderson believes that Alberta would not look much different in terms of healthcare or social programs, save for the improvement made by more of the revenue generated in the province being re-invested into the province itself.
“We'd have more resources under the free Alberta strategy,” said Anderson. “They contemplate the stopping equalization and, and net transfers out of the province, we've sent more than six over the last 60 years, we've spent more than a cent more than $600 billion to Ottawa, more than we've got back and in federal spending, and that 600 billion is largely gone to Quebec as well as as well as the Maritimes for vote buying schemes in those areas, by generally federal liberal governments, but also by conservative federal conservative governments as well, just to a lesser extent. but this with the strategy contemplates putting an end to that. And so that means more resources for Alberta, which means more healthcare dollars, more education, dollars, more social spending, and also fewer taxes.”
Anderson specifically notes that the money could be used to increase ICU capacity during this pandemic, and said that money being sent to Ottawa may be the cause of the lack of healthcare resources in the province.
“We’re sitting here with 300 ICU beds in the middle of a pandemic, well, of course there's gonna be problems when you run your health system like that,” said Anderson. “When you don't have enough resources. So that's why we're losing doctors and nurses to neighboring provinces right now. And we're not going to get them back so long as we continue to have our resources sucked dry by Ottawa.”
Anna Smith, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Prairie Post East
ALBERTA SEPERATISM IS AMERICAN DECSENDENTS IN ALBERTA, AND SOME AMERICAN SECOND GENERATION WHO PROPOSE THESE LETS SEPERATE AND JOIN AMERICA SCHEMES
IN THE PAST WE HAVE HAD NUMEROUS SEPERATIST PARTIES OF THE RIGHT SINCE PETER LOUGHEED FOUGHT OFF THE WESTERN CANADA CONCEPT (WCC) WHICH AROSE OUT OF THE COLLAPSED SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY/GIVERNMENT
IT AROSE IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA AS ALL THESE MOVEMENTS OF THE RIGHT DO.
CALGARY IS THE LARGEST AMERICAN CITY IN CANADA
RIGHT WING MORMONS PROMOTE ANTI TAX CAMPAIGNS AS THEY PAY THROUGH THEIR CHURCH TITHES INSTEAD.
DUTCH REFORM CHURCH RIGHT WING ACTIVISTS CAME HERE FROM SOUTH AFRICA
AND PROMOTE THEIR NEO CALVANISM THROUGH GROUPS LIKE THE FAKE UNION CLAC AND THE CHRISTIAN FARMERS ASSOC OF CANADA WHO FOUNDED AND SUPPORTED THE REFORM PARTY
SEE
Thursday, July 14, 2005
The Real Story of Alberta's BSE Crisis
Mad Cow Crisis was made in Alberta
"Shoot, Shovel, Shut-up"
Premier Ralph Klein
The Death of the Alberta Packing House industry, Lack of Feedlot Inspections, and Privatization,led to the BSE Crisis
NEWS FLASH:
By BETH GORHAM
U.S. border closure seen bringing permanent split in North American beef marketCanada's red meat processing industry has annual sales of $11.4-billion, employs 34,000 people, and is the fourth-largest manufacturing sector after cars, petroleum and lumber.
That increased capacity won't go away when the U.S. border is reopened to live cattle from Canada, Laws said.
"The bricks and mortar investments that we've been making to process the cattle that we used to export to the U.S. are quite literally 'concrete.' They will not be dismantled if the border opens later this month.
"At the end of the day the Canadian beef industry will be stronger than it was before and better able to compete on the international stage."
Even if the border is reopened, the meat packers are confident that Canadian ranchers will make sure they stay in business, Laws said.
"This is a growing industry in Canada," he said. "We know Canadian farmers will not soon forget that border closed and that they need to keep supplying this extra capacity that was built in Canada."
In contrast, U.S. meat packing plants have been closing or operating far below capacity, said Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute.
He said 7,800 jobs are gone in the U.S. industry, although he blames that on a combination of factors, not just the lost access to Canadian cattle.
The price of ground beef in the United States has risen so sharply that low-income consumers are shifting to other types of protein such as pork and chicken, he said.
"The changes that are occurring in the U.S. beef industry will become permanent and so too will the corresponding changes that are occurring here in Canada," he said.
"Former partners in trade, in an integrated market, will now become fierce competitors in international markets going forward, unless we can restore trade to our two countries."
Which proves my point in this article, that we need to have an indiginous Alberta packing house industry that is a cooperative between producers and plant workers. Otherwise we remain a branch plant of Tyson, XL and Cargill, who will profit from Canadian beef processing while the market declines in the U.S.
The BSE (mad cow) crisis revealed that farmers in Canada were at the mercy of corporate agribusiness, in particular Tyson, Cargill, and XL Foods, American based Agribusiness corporations.
Alberta is the largest beef producing province in Canada, we have lost our home grown meat packing industry over the last three decades, and are now dominated by 3 American direct marketing Agribusiness Corporations. This has exasperated the impact of the BSE crisis in the province, and as a result Federal and Provincial funds for BSE supplemental payments did not go to farmers but to Tyson, Cargill and XL Foods.
"The farm income crisis is not due to farmer “inefficiencies”, but is in fact attributable to
the dominant market power of a relative handful of very powerful corporations. Nowhere
is this more clearly demonstrated than in the beef processing sector. Over the past two
years, a number of investigations by the House of Commons Agriculture Committee, the
Senate Agriculture Committee, the Alberta Auditor General, and the federal Competition
Bureau, into allegations of excessive profiteering by Cargill, Tyson, XL Foods and other
packing companies have brought to light important information about this sector.
The big players in the Canadian beef packing industry are the federally-inspected plants.
There are currently 19 federally-inspected beef packers in
weekly slaughter capacity of 25 head in
The two largest packers, Lakeside (Tyson) and Cargill, are both currently ramping up
capacity by approximately 4000 head per week, further increasing their dominance over
the industry. XL Foods, with its two plants in
player in the game with a combined slaughter capacity of 9,000 head weekly. Better Beef
Ltd. of
weekly, nearly matching XL’s output.
The Alberta Auditor General’s report, which followed the money trail in the wake of the
report revealed that only three federally-inspected meat packers: Cargill, Tyson
Foods (Lakeside) and XL Foods, controlled “at least 90%” of the capacity in
slaughter capacity for the country.
(behind
cattle-feeding region.
2000. Between 1989 and 2002,
currently the province accounts for 72% of the entire Canadian slaughter industry."
National Farmers Union Submission to the Federal Competition Bureau June, 2005
Regional Consequences of the BSE Crisis By David Kilgour, MP for
The immediate banning by the
PRIME TIME CRIME
Mad Cow and the Canadian Food Industry
Collapse of the Packing House Industry in Alberta
Sets the Conditions for the BSE Crisis
Alberta saw a bust in the meat packing industry in the province begining in the later years of the 1970's as packers diversified into other industries, shut down plants, retired staff and in some cases consolidated holdings through mergers and acquisitons. Such was the case with Gainers.
Tory administrations from the 1970s to the early 1990s tried their hands at diversification, but took risks by using public dollars to prop up existing businesses or to help set up new ones. The province ended up with a long string of financial misadventures involving nearly $2 billion worth of government loans and loan guarantees to businesses. For instance, the province took a $209-million hit by the time
Tom Ogle,
It was not just an
In contrast, a much more rapid consolidation has recently swept beef and pork processing.
Since 1980, the number of slaughter plants has plunged from more than 600 to about 170 for cattle and from more than 500 to about 180 for hogs. The number of meat processing firms has also dwindled rapidly, boosting the market share held by the industry’s largest players, especially among beef processors The rapid consolidation has vaulted the beef processing industry into “highly concentrated” status, the highest rank in the classification scheme the U.S. Department of Justice uses in its antitrust oversight.
The New U.S. Meat Industry
By Alan Barkema, Mark Drabenstott, and Nancy Novack
Following the Leader: IBP and the Restructuring of
Associate Professor
Culture & Agriculture
Spring 1996, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 3-8
Posted online on December 10, 2004.
(doi:10.1525/cag.1996.18.1.3)
View Table of Contents
As I wrote in the
While CEO's and power brokers on the boards of Gainers, Swifts, Burns and
They did this during the Swifts/Canada Packers strike in '78 when Burns would not hire striking workers from
At the same time this was the begining of the end of the old Packing House industry, more of it's workers in the U.S. were retired, leaving the packing houses as gravy operations, all capital expansion had been paid off, aside from retirement costs and paying a reduced work force, the packing houses were shear profit makers, allowing companies like Swifts to move from being the company that produced butter ball turkeys for Thanksgiving, to becoming Esmark Corp. a diversified company that owned Wonderbra.
In
In fact the old
"If you can't win, change the rules!" Peter Pocklington
He forced UFCW into a strike at Gainers in 1986, and a bitter labour battle insued at the old
The impact of the Gainers Strike cannot be underestimated, it proved once and for all the Tory Government in
Gainers was a meat-packing company which used to be effectively controlled by Peter Pocklington. Beneficially, he owned all the shares and he was the sole director of Gainers. It encountered financial difficulties and went through a difficult strike. The provincial government loaned it money, in return for many kinds of security, under a master agreement and some ancillary documents. Later another lender demanded more security. The government consented to that happening, in return for some additional security to the government from other Pocklington companies, and a standstill agreement was signed. Ultimately the loan went into default, the government foreclosed, and became the effective owner of Gainers.
Gainers Inc. v. Pocklington Financial Corporation, 2000 ABCA 151
The draconian revamping of class relations, and the gutting of any sense of labour entitlement, was evident in the aftermath of the 1986 Gainers' strike in Edmonton, a six month battle that culminated in the dismantling of the provincial Labour Relations Act that convinced 10,000 Canadian entrepreneurs that Alberta had the least pro-labour legal system in the country. Sections of the new Labour Relations Code made it more and more difficult to secure union certification and allowed the Lieutenant Governor to revoke labour charters if a union participated in a so-called illegal strike.
What, in this context, is the specific threat of globalization? In
System Failure: The Break-Down of the Post-War Settlement and the Politics of Labour in our Time. Keynote speech delivered by Professor Bryan Palmer on May 7,2004 at the Alberta Federation of Labour membership forum
Peter Pocklington was right about one thing: he is at the centre of a high-level conspiracy coming out of
In fact, the man Edmontonians love to hate had better be on the next Greyhound bound for anywhere, before pitch-fork wielding peasants storm his Glenora fortress, drag him behind a horse to Sir Winston Churchill Square and put him in stocks while adults ridicule him, children throw rotten tomatoes at him, blackflies feed off the debris and he fills his pants with a week's accumulation of millionaire droppings.
For years, Edmontonians have been telling this guy to hit the road. As far as some folks are concerned, Pocklington isn't even an Edmontonian, he's a character out of a Dickens novel. Look at the record. The guy started out as a used-car dealer. Anyone can do that, but no one earns much respect.
His behavior, however, went beyond merely tacky. Pocklington became positively hated in some quarters when his employees at Gainers went on strike. Pocklington took advantage of
Richard Cairney, SEE Magazine:Thursday, July 30th., 1998
Maple Leaf Meats: Time to Bring Home the Bacon
MacDonald questions Minister’s apathy given the
It is time for the Minister of Labour to start doing his job and work toward keeping the Maple Leaf hog processing facility in Edmonton, says Alberta Liberal Labour Critic Hugh MacDonald.
MacDonald was referring to Labour Minister Murray Smith’s unwillingness to get involved in the labour dispute between the facility and its workers. “The advantages of upgrading the
“The future of one of
“Maple Leaf Foods and Executive Vice-President Patrick Jones, in particular, must realize threats and intimidation will not work to resolve this labour dispute,” said MacDonald. “Let’s not repeat the strike of 1986."
In an interim quarterly report to shareholders in May 1997, Maple Leaf credits a significant part of its 20% increase in operating earnings to its 1996 acquisition of Burns Meats/Gainers. “If this is the case, why is Maple Leaf anxious to abandon their operation in
They forced the UFCW into an untenable national strike, which resulted in the closing of packing plants in
Had the government upgraded the old
While smaller plant operations began in
American Agribusiness Corporations like Cargill, XLFoods and Tyson to move in.
Canada Packers Inc.
Canada Packers Inc. formerly, Canada Packers Limited, was formed in 1927 in
The merger of the William Davies Company, Gunns and the Harris Abbatoir Company was largely out of economic necessity. While the 1920s were roaring for everyone else, the meat packing industry was reeling from excess capacity that had been built up during the war. When the post war boom ended in the fall of 1920, packers were unprepared and sustained heavy losses.
The one exception was the Harris Abbatoir Company, whose president James Harris and secretary-treasurer J.S. McLean quickly recognized the war boom was over and moved swiftly to do what had to be done - cut costs and focus their business.
By 1927 the Canadian meat packing industry was in a crisis, the likes of which would not be seen again until the 1980s. At the end of January, Gunns was refused further credit. Without this, the company could not purchase livestock. They approached Harris and in early February all shares of Gunns capital stock were transferred. In June, Harris also acquired from Allied Packers the plants and inventories of The Canadian Packing Company Limited. In August, the shareholders of both Harris Abbatoir Company and William Davies Company agreed to merge their interests into a new holding company called Canada Packers Limited.
For more than 50 years, Canada Packers Inc. dominated the meat processing industry and was a leading researcher, processor and marketer of a wide range of meat and agribusiness products in
However, the 1980s for a number of economic reasons proved to be the most difficult time for the company since 1927. Thanks to geographic and product diversification, Canada Packers was able to withstand the serious blow to its beef business.
By 1990, when Canada Packers merged with Maple Leaf Mills to form Maple Leaf Foods, the company had exited the beef business and refocused its meat business on pork and poultry. Maple Leaf Foods today is
As this article shows the Gainers plant ( which was the old Canada Packers Plant) was a viable operation until it was closed and gutted by Maple Leaf for its equipment. The plant could have been upgraded, had the Klein government bothered to spend money on it instead of selling it off to Burns.
By Ivan Hall, P.Eng. ASHRAE NAC Historian
A short article in a May, 2001 edition of the Edmonton Journal rekindled my interest in this facility; now gone. I had taken some photos of the inside of the power plant when it was being demolished; not knowing its illustrious origin or innovative past. It was, for all intents and purposes, a well known industrial plant that had seen better days and was now gone.
In fact it had exploded onto the
According to writeups in the Edmonton Journal throughout 1936,
The Depression had deferred serious planning for such a move as companies fought for their very survival. When finally begun, both design staff and Canada Packers staff worked for almost two years to ensure strategic placement of equipment was synchronized with production flow. Experts in the various departments were asked to critique space allotments as well as interdependent process flows and overall functionality. These reviews resulted in the construction of a scale model for presentation to the owners prior to letting of tenders for the work.
The plant architects were a partnership of Professor Eric R. Arthur, head of architecture at the
Facilities in the
Sod turning took place March 16, 1936 and the plant was operationally completed September 14, 1936; although the official opening did not occur till November 4, 1936. At its peak construction period, almost 400 tradesmen in 35 trades were employed on the million dollar project. The contract was awarded to Bird Construction Limited - then of
Notable subtrades included Dominion Bridge Ltd. for structural steel, S.B. Noble Electric for electrical and the Highlands Tinshop for sheet metal and ventilation. Even the
Of particular note was the Spanish cork used to insulate the coolers and freezers. Thirteen carloads of cork arrived in time for the project, despite
For ASHRAE, the main interest is the power plant. It contained, amongst other things, the refrigeration plant. This cooling plant was based on 3-75 ton
The plant manufactured its own ice using an ice making machine that consisted of a large water drum and press; the walls of the drum being subcooled by ammonia refrigerant. Water was sprayed on to the drum and immediately formed ice crystals on the drum walls. An auger arrangement with several 'knives' continuously scrapped the crystals off which were carried out of the drum by the water and into the press. The press produced 2-ounce briquettes from the crystals at a rate of over 1 ton per hour. Fifty tons of ice were produced daily and was led by chutes into waiting refrigerated rail cars for rapid, planned loading of fresh product for shipment across the continent. In later years only flake ice was produced.
The power plant also contained the three large Babcock & Wilcox steam boilers, which were fired on natural gas - rather innovative for the times. Steam was generated for process steam for sterilizing and scalding, as well as for heating. Electricity came from local utility power. There was a large BroomWade air compressor and condenser/drier supplemented with an Ingersoll Rand air compressor; both to supply compressed process air.
Apart from the main abattoir and packing operations, the plant contained a chemical laboratory for safety and quality testing, facilities for 'pickling' and smoking meat, hide curing cellars, edible and inedible fat rendering and a vegetable oil refining plant. This was believed to be western
Notables attending the opening included premier Aberhart, Arthur Meighan- leader of the senate, J.S. McLean - president of Canada Packers and J.A. Clarke - mayor of
Thus started a major meat packing industry in
acknowledgements:
- Eugene Chorneyko, retired operating engineer, Canada Packers
- Reg Bruce, RET, Pace Refrigeration
- Mike Sadava, Edmonton Journal
- Ib Froberg, retired plant supervisor, Canada Packers
The integration of the American packing plant operations in Alberta, where they own feed stock, that is their own beef, their monoploy in the beef market, where independent farmers have no recourse but to sell to Tyson or Cargill, is what exasperated the BSE crisis in the province.
The faliure of the Alberta government, after the Gainers debacle, to assure producers, packing plant workers , and consumers, that we had an indigenous home grown packing plant operations for Beef, created the crisis we now face with the border closings to Alberta beef.
After the beef has left the farm the government is busy trying to close the gate. What
| Farming co-op forges ahead |
| Last updated Jul 26 2005 10:56 AM MDT CBC News |
| A farming cooperative in Northern Alberta is going ahead with plans to build its own meat processing facility. Members of the Peace Country Tender Beef Co-op say they're not deterred by the long-awaited reopening of the American border to Canadian cattle. The co-op was conceived during the protracted border closure and industry upheaval which started with the discovery of a case of Mad Cow disease in 2003. It has grown to about 600 members. Member Seth Barnfield says the past few years have taught him that Canadians need to become less dependent on the United States. "We've got to get more value added, we've got to get more processing in our country or we're going to be behind it all the time," he said. "We're seeing it all the time, we're shipping everything out, like our lumber, and we're just killing our small communities." The co-op is converting a curling club in the small town of Berwyn into a meat processing plant due to open this fall. The organization is also working with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on plans for a new slaughter house for 2006. The Canadian cattle industry was decimated by the closure of the U.S. border. Exports losses have been tagged at $7 billion. The federal government and the provinces poured more than $2.5 billion to keep the industry afloat. |
PRIVATIZING INSPECTIONS = BSE CRISIS
In the United States the Reagan regime in the eighties relaxed the requirement of Federal Meat Inspections, another attempt to get the government out of business, leaving the Meat Packers to do self inspections. The result has been an increase of cases of e-coli in food that have made news headlines for causing death and injury to consumers.
At least on two occasions prior to the BSE crisis, e-coli outbreaks in the United States were blamed on Federally inspected beef from Canada, and CBS 60 Minutes pointed their fingers to Alberta as the culprit. The company was
The reality however was that the companies involved were mixing Federally inspected Canadian meat with their tainted self inspected American meat. But because it was ground beef, there was no way of identifying it as Canadian Beef or American Beef. Such is the interlocking connections between the packing houses in
What the cattlemen detest most is the meat inspection system. The story of how Upton Sinclair muckraked the slaughterhouses some one hundred years ago and Teddy Roosevelt jumped in and fixed them all up is pretty much fiction. The simple fact is the meat inspection system isn't any good and anybody who even attempts to stand up to the Big Boy ranchers does so at his or her peril. Look what happened to Bill Lehman, who throughout the early 1990s worked as a meat inspector at
After some children died from an E. coli outbreak in the 90s, Lehman told about his work: "I merely walk to the back of the truck. That's all I'm allowed to do. Whether there's boxed meat or carcasses in the truck, I can't touch the boxes. I can't open the boxes. I can't use a flashlight. I can't walk into the truck. I can only look at what is visible in the back of the trailer." He told one interviewer how he did his inspections: "I've just inspected over 80,000 pounds of meat (boxed beef rounds and boxed boneless beef briskets) on two trucks. I wasn't running or hurrying either. One was bound for
Mondo
by James Ridgeway
Slaughterhouse Politics
Ranchers Fought Rules That Might Have Prevented Mad
Village Voice, December 31, 2003 - January 6, 2004
In
How LIS Got Started
In 1992, the Government of
The neopotism continues with the new Minister of Agriculture Doug Horner whose cousin , Craig Horner of the
Horner follows late father into agriculture portfolio
Jeff Holubitsky
The Edmonton Journal
November 25, 2004
EDMONTON - When Doug Horner found out he was going to be Alberta's agriculture minister, one of the first things he did was arrange to have his late father's desk moved into his new legislature office.
"He has the same desk that dad had when he was minister of agriculture," Horner's constituency manager Carol Stewart said Wednesday, shortly after Premier Ralph Klein announced the makeup of Alberta's new cabinet.
"He's extremely happy that it's agriculture, because he knows and loves agriculture," she said.
Horner's family and business backgrounds make the appointment appropriate.
His father was Dr. Hugh Horner,
Doug Horner's father was not his only political connection. The new minister was not available for comment Wednesday because he was travelling to attend the funeral of his uncle, Jack Horner, the colourful former federal politician who crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the Trudeau government in 1977.
Horner, 43, was an international grain trader with a business education and banking background when he was first elected to represent Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert in 2001.
During this whole BSE crisis in
AGRIBUSINESS INTERGRATED FEEDLOTS=BSE
The third aspect of how the BSE crisis was homegrown in Alberta is the lack of inspections of feedlots and the dominance of the feedlot business by integrated agribusiness monopolies. Along with cattle feed, they produce and mill other feed, sell fertilizers, raise cattle and pork, chickens, etc.
These companies use
Sometimes they contract directly with a packing house, who then can claim their animals as their own, which was one of the reasons that Tyson and Cargill were able to profit from generous BSE grants that should have gone to farmers.
Alberta houses hundreds of thousands of heads of cattle, in its feedlot operations, including cattle from the
Canada Gears UP
Rick Purnell
Sep 1, 1999
It wasn't long after commercial cattle feeding began in the
Economics
Finished cattle mostly end up at packing plants in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario or at U.S. plants in Washington, Utah, Idaho and Colorado. Selling methods include sealed bids, private treaty, formula or grid pricing and forward contracts. Estimates show about 14% of the 1998 fed cattle supply was packer-owned. Despite normal industry consolidation, industry leaders display a relatively bright outlook for feeding in
"Currently, there are no existing environmental laws pertaining specifically to feedyards," Axelson says. "We're governed by laws under the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and the Health Act. These come into play if an event contaminates water sources or puts public health at risk. That's not to say regulations are lax - there are examples of action being taken by the authorities in justified instances."
Lax environmental laws, lax inspections, the privatization of LIS and its failure to implement a BSE inspection of feedlots, the Alberta Advantage of the Klein government is directly responsible for the BSE crisis we now face.
There are four thousand feedlots in
But there are thirty-three feedlots with over 10-thousand head of cattle each, and those larger feedlots represent more than half of the beef production here.
Some people call them factory farms. The people who own them prefer the term intensive livestock operations.
And two big
And here is an irony the Americans who are lobbying to halt live Canadian cattle being imported into the
US Appeals court reserves on mad cow decision
A U.S. federal appeals court has reserved its decision after being asked to overturn a temporary injunction keeping the border closed to live Canadian cattle.
Editorial from Denver Post July 16
Sensible ruling on beef imports
How do you spell hypocrites: R-CALF, read on.
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Agribusiness and its friends in the Klein government are directly responsible for the BSE crisis we now face. The failure to save our indigenous packing houses, the outsourcing of the LIS to the business interests they were supposed to inspect, the failure to inspect and regulate feedlots, all of it contributed to the current crisis and all of it can be laid at the door of the Klein government.
The Alberta BSE crisis, as was the case in Thatchers
But the chickens have come home to roost. Unfortuntely when this govenment got hoisted on its own petard for the past two years those who have suffered the most are neither the politicians or their relatives and pals in the agribusiness industry. It was the farmers and workers who got the shaft of this petard.
And now it looks like with a strike imminent at Tysons Lakeside Plant in Brooks, thanks to this governments anti-labour laws, farmers will face another crisis this summer.
Like the BSE crisis, one created by the government that says it speaks for them.
Celebrating Mad Cow Disease:
The absurdity of protectionism
By Miriam Martin
Corporate History of an Integrated Feedlot Agribusiness
Ridley Inc. (Feed-Rite Mills).
Ridley Inc. was founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba as Feed-Rite Mills Ltd. in 1939 by Cyril L. "Andy" Anderson. As a veterinary nutritionist Andy Anderson was an early proponent of scientifically formulated feed rations for improving the productivity of livestock herds and poultry flocks. Anderson's success was based on a strategy to deliver animal nutrition, health and livestock management products in any form required by the livestock producing customer. Feed-Rite grew gradually after the Second World-War, building new feed production plants in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and eventually became the largest feed production company in Western Canada.
In 1994 privately held Feed-Rite was acquired by the Ridley Corporation Limited, the largest animal feed producer and salt refiner in
Feed-Rite has since been renamed Ridley Inc. and now trades as a public company on the
Significant events in the history of Ridley Inc.
1939
Feed-Rite Mills Ltd., established by C. L. Anderson, begins producing feed from a single plant on Higgins Avenue in downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba.
1967
Feed-Rite builds second feed plant in Brandon, Manitoba.
1975
Feed-Rite builds third feed plant in Humboldt, Saskatchewan.
1977
Feed-Rite begins construction of a new large-capacity plant in the St. Boniface district of Winnipeg, renown for its concentration of meat packing plants.
1978
Feed-Rite acquires an existing feed mill from Solar Feeds in Manitou, Manitoba.
1981
Feed-Rite moves head office administrative staff to the St. Boniface plant and closes the old downtown Winnipeg plant.
1984
Feed-Rite expands its reach of operations into Alberta with a new plant in Linden, Alberta.
Constructs a fully automated micro ingredient premix plant adjacent to the St. Boniface feed plant.
1987
Feed-Rite builds new feed plant in Arborg, Manitoba.
1988
Under a World Bank contract Feed-Rite constructs a micro premix plant for the Beijiao Poultry Company in Beijiao, Guangdong province of the People’s Republic of China.
Feed-Rite builds a premix plant in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a premix plant and store in Red Deer, Alberta and a feed supply store and warehouse in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
1990
Feed-Rite builds new feed plant in St. Paul, Alberta.
1992
Feed-Rite obtains the exclusive production and marketing rights in Western Canada of Cotswold purebred swine stock. Cotswold Western Canada Ltd. established to produce and market the pigs from a hog facility in Malonton, Manitoba.
1993
Feed-Rite constructs feed mill and farm supply store in New Liskeard, Ontario, center of the Clay Belt farming region of northern Ontario. Under a World Bank contract Feed-Rite constructs a micro premix plant for the Shanghai Poultry & Egg Company in Shanghai, Peoples’ Republic of China.
1994
Ridley Corporation Ltd. acquires privately-held Feed-Rite Ltd. Based in Sydney, Australia, Ridley is Australia’s largest feed manufacturer and salt producer.
1995
Feed-Rite Ltd. acquires Quality Feeds Alberta Ltd., of Lacombe, Alberta.
1996
Feed-Rite acquires Green Valley Feed Service Ltd. of Grunthal, Manitoba and Farmix Ltd., a livestock premix manufacturer based in Mitchell, Ontario.
Feed-Rite USA, Inc., acquires the assets of Zip Feed Mills, Inc., including feed production plants located in Sioux Falls and Huron, South Dakota and Grandin, North Dakota.
1997
Feed-Rite acquires the Western Canadian operations of Daco Laboratories Limited, a livestock premix manufacturer with plants in Lethbridge, Alberta and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Ridley Corporation acquires the feed production assets formerly owned by the Hubbard Milling Company, Inc. of Mankato, Minnesota, renamed as Hubbard Feeds Inc.
Feed-Rite Ltd. changes name to Ridley Canada Ltd. and issues common stock publicly trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (RCL).
1998
Ridley Canada Ltd. acquires Macleod Feed Mill Ltd. of Fort Macleod, Alberta.
Acquires the assets of PM Ag Product's Inc.s low-moisture block business in Texas, Indiana and Oregon and consolidates it with existing block operations of Hubbard Feeds.
Acquires the Cotswold Pig Development Company Limited which controls world-wide franchise rights for Cotswold pig breeding stock.
Acquires the feed business assets of Gringer Feed & Grain of Iowa City, Iowa.
Changes name to Ridley Inc. to reflect geographically expanded scope of operations.
2000
Acquires the feed production assets of the Animal Nutrition Division ("Wayne Feeds") of ContiGroup Companies (Continental Grain Company). Included in the acquisition are twelve plants located in Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Iowa and North Carolina.
2002
Sells European operations of U.K. based Cotswold Pig Development Company Limited to JSR Newsham Limited. Continues U.S. and Canadian swine breeding operations independently as Cotswold Swine Genetics.
Acquires 50% shareholding in McCauley Bros., Inc., a manufacturer of specialty horse feeds based in Versailles, Kentucky.
Acquires 100% of shares of feed and premix manufacturer, Shamrock Feeds Ltd. of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
2003
Acquires feed milling assets of Heartland, Inc. of Bismarck, North Dakota.
Sells Cotswold Swine Genetics business to PIC (Sygen International).
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