Canadian farmers battle avian flu as bird death toll hits 1.7 million

CALGARY — Canadian poultry and egg producers have now lost more than 1.7 million farmed birds to a highly contagious strain of avian influenza.

The latest numbers are provided by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which says the tally includes both birds that have died of the virus and birds that have been humanely euthanized to prevent the disease's spread.

Alberta is the hardest hit province, with 900,000 birds dead and 23 farms affected.

Ontario is the second hardest hit, with 23 affected farms and 425,000 birds dead.

The strain of avian influenza currently affecting chicken and turkey farmers throughout North America can be spread easily by both wild and domestic birds.

Farmers are being encouraged to keep birds indoors, restrict visitors and ramp up biosecurity measures to help halt the spread.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 6, 2022.

Related video: New B.C. avian flu cases highlight the risk to backyard flocks (Global News)

British Columbians asked to remove bird feeders due to avian flu outbreak

Amy Judd - Yesterday 10:26 a.m.
Global News

New B.C. avian flu cases highlight the risk to backyard flocks

The BC SPCA is asking the public to temporarily remove backyard bird feeders and to empty bird baths due to the avian flu outbreak spreading across the country.

The organization said although waterfowl, such as ducks, geese and gulls, and raptors including eagles, hawks and owls are at the highest risk of avian influenza, or bird flu, it can infect all birds.

It is considered highly contagious and is spread through infected birds through feces and respiratory secretions. The BC SPCA said the virus is also resilient and can survive in the environment for several months.

On Wednesday, officials said they have detected avian flu in two more B.C. small poultry flocks.

Read more:
Bird flu confirmed in 2 more B.C. small poultry flocks in Richmond, Kelowna

The B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Food said the H5N1 avian influenza virus was most recently confirmed among small poultry flocks in Richmond and Kelowna.

The infected premises have been placed under quarantine by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the ministry said producers within a 12-kilometre radius have been informed.

The poultry are believed to have contracted the virus through contact with infected migrating wild birds.

Video: 2 separate cases of avian flu found in wild Manitoba birds, province warns

The virus sweeping across North America was first found in B.C. at a commercial poultry producer in the North Okanagan last month. It has since been detected in two other small poultry flocks in Kelowna and the Kootenays.

“Bird feeders can be sites for disease spread because they encourage unnatural congregations of birds and attract other wildlife,” Dr. Andrea Wallace, manager of wild animal welfare for the BC SPCA, said in a release.

“Fallen seed is also an especially dangerous source of disease - when birds feed from the ground, they are also exposed to droppings that accumulate below a feeder.” She says the presence of bird feeders and baths can also increase the risk of transmitting the virus between nearby animals such as backyard chickens or turkeys.

Read more:

‘Devastating’: 16 cases of Avian flu found in Alberta

“On rare occasions, this virus can also cause disease in humans who have been in close contact with infected birds, or heavily contaminated areas,” Wallace added. “We need to do everything we can to stop H5N1 in its tracks.”

Wallace says that, in addition to removing bird feeders and emptying birdbaths, the BC SPCA is asking the public to monitor their outdoor surroundings for any signs of sick birds. “Birds may appear lethargic, unusually “fluffed up,” have nasal discharge, or have excessively watery eyes or swelling of the head and eyelids," she said.

The public is asked to report sightings of sick or dead wild birds to the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative (CWHC) at 1-800-567-2033. If the report is assessed to require further investigation, a biologist may retrieve the carcass for further testing. “Please do not bring deceased birds to a wildlife rehabilitation centre or veterinary clinic as they will not be able to test for the disease,” Wallace added.

The BC SPCA said it is not necessary to remove hummingbird feeders at this time but it is important to regularly change the nectar and clean them to prevent deadly fungal outbreaks. However, if the public sees sick birds at the feeder they should remove it immediately.

BC

Deadly avian flu wipes out Burton poultry flock

Peggy Ife knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the chicken run on her Burton area farm on April 21.

“We saw a [dead] bird here and a bird there, about five or six,” she said. “We thought something had got into the yard. And we found a hole in the fence. So we thought that was it. We cleaned up the birds and put the others back in the coop.”

But the next day the birds were still exhibiting stress signs – some showed no interest in eating, or were huddled in corners of the coop.

“I knew something was wrong,” she says. “I call them ‘my girls’ – I spend enough time with my kids.”

Then more started dying.

“Friday night I found a couple on the floor that didn’t look right, and I thought, OK, this seems to be going past the ‘stress’ phase,” Ife recalls. “Then they started dropping, literally, dead.”

By the time the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors arrived the next Monday morning, she had lost nearly 60 of her 70 birds.

It’s not been an easy time, and having to cull her whole flock is “devastating.”

“I’ve had birds since 2006. One that just passed away was born here in 2012. I have a goose that’s 14. My kids usually die of old age,” she says.

The inspectors arrived (“Really nice people, lots of information,” she says) and sampled her birds. A few days later, she received the news: her birds had H5N1, the virulent strain of avian flu.

Ife’s handful of remaining birds had to be put down, as a measure to stop the spread of the virus to more areas.

“My husband keeps looking at me, to see if I’m okay,” Ife told the Valley Voice the day before she received the news. “I’m hanging in there, but the more I think of what is going to happen – I’m sorry, when the time comes, I cannot be the one to put my babies down.”

Ife put her story on several community Facebook pages, and word spread to hundreds of backyard poultry keepers in the Valley Voice readership area to be on the lookout for avian influenza.

Avian influenza or ‘bird flu,’ is a contagious and lethal virus that can make birds sick or die. There are two strains of the disease, one mild and one virulent. Ife’s flock caught the latter, H5N1, thought to be coming north with the spring migration of wild birds.

Ife says she suspects that’s how her birds caught it.

“My wild bird feeders were all empty for a few weeks, so I decided to be nice, and fill them to feed the wild birds. And I have a lot of feeders,” she says.

Agricultural officials are urging owners of small or backyard flocks to continue to be vigilant and have appropriate preventative measures in place.

“Measures include eliminating or reducing opportunities for poultry to encounter wild birds, reducing human access to the flock, and increased cleaning, disinfection, and sanitization of all things (including clothing and footwear) when entering areas where flocks are housed,” the CFIA recommends.

Ife’s flock is not the only case of avian flu in BC. CFIA officials announced a week earlier a confirmed case in a backyard poultry flock in Kelowna. A dead bald eagle was also found in the Lower Mainland.

That’s where the biggest concern lies – the lower Fraser Valley is home to the province’s chicken industry. The last time avian flu swept through there, in 2004, 17 million birds had to be culled to save the industry.

Avian influenza is rare in humans and generally does not spread easily between people.

“During an outbreak of avian influenza in poultry, the risk to the general public is very low,” says the CFIA. “Most avian influenza viruses cannot spread easily from birds to people, or from person to person. However, any new influenza virus in the human population is a concern because of its potential to change and adapt for more easy transmission between people.”

In the meantime, Ife is pleading with her fellow poultry keepers in the region to do the right thing: remove sources of interaction between wild and domestic birds, and report any dead wild birds they may spot.

“If you have wild bird feeders, take them down,” she says. “If you want to free-range, there’s always the chance they will catch something. But if you have a run, make sure you have no bird feeders, and if you feed yours outside, make sure they clean it up before the wild birds come in. Bring your birds’ water source inside.”

While being ordered to cull her birds is hard, Ife says she did the right thing by reporting it.

“I understand why people wouldn’t want to report, because of that,” she says. “But if they don’t know where it’s happening, they can’t stop its spread.”

John Boivin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Valley Voice

Capitalists are Dispensable, Laborers Are Not

BY M. SHAHID ALAM

 DECEMBER 28, 2021Facebook

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Photograph Source: Mark Dixon – CC BY 2.0

“If you set to work to believe everything,
you will tire out the believing-muscles of your mind,
and then you’ll be so weak you won’t be able
to believe the simplest true things.”

– Lewis Carroll

Capitalists—qua owners of capital—are dispensable, but laborers are not.

This thesis flows from a neglected asymmetry between capitalists and laborers. The capitalist does not stand in the same relation to capital and the services of capital as a laborer does with respect to his laboring capacities and the services of these capacities. This distinction goes unacknowledged by neoclassical economists as well as economists of other persuasions. If this is because they have concluded that this is of no consequence, we offer some arguments to the contrary.

There is irony in this thesis even as capitalism threatens to render laborers ‘useless,’ that is, replace them with intelligent machines faster than it creates new jobs. But this is not the place to address this irony.

Why are capitalists dispensable?

Consider a series of relations moving from a capitalist to his capital, and from capital to the services of capital. Next examine another series moving from a laborer to his laboring capacities, and from these capacities to the diverse services of these capacities, also known as the services of labor. There exist important differences between the two series.

There exists no integral—or, if you prefer, visceral—connection between the capitalist and his capital or between the capitalist and the services of capital. Capital and the services of capital are wholly external to the capitalist qua owner of capital; their relationship to the capitalist is merely legal so that a capitalist can be physically separated from his capital and the services of his capital. If the capitalist prefers leisure to work or lacks the requisite managerial skills, he can delegate the task of running his enterprise to hired managers. Once the capitalist appoints a manager to run his enterprise, he could be soaking the sun inside one of the many craters on the moon while his enterprise continues to produce goods or services somewhere in Agawam, Massachusetts. All this notwithstanding, at the end of every year or every quarter, this capitalist will receive the profits or carry the losses of his enterprise. This is his return for risking his funds to organize production.

Now consider an economy whose capital has been transferred to the workers in each enterprise. The workers in each enterprise form a worker-cooperative; they collectively own its capital, vote to elect a workers’ council who then appoint managers, or elect the managers directly. In addition, each WC is free to borrow funds from deposit banks or tax-funded investment banks. Each WC is also free to sell some fraction of its fixed capital should this not be needed; the proceeds from this sale may be used to pay off loans, deposited in a bank as a reserve fund against rainy days, or allocated to research and development.

Each worker cooperative may choose its modus vivendi and its goals. At first, therefore, a variety of worker cooperatives may emerge, with different goals and structures; they may be more or less egalitarian; some may work primarily with fixed wages, others with a combination of fixed wages and shares in the coop’s residual. Some may give greater weight to steady employment, others to higher wages. It is difficult to say, which types of cooperatives may emerge as winners. Collectively, the cooperatives may set some limits to the goals, and the governance and the reward structures of the coops to ensure the viability of the system as a whole.

In one stroke then, we have created a market economy without any capitalists as the term is understood in a capitalist economy. Production in this economy is organized by worker cooperatives, whose policies are formulated by a management periodically elected by workers. The workers in each enterprise are free to set the rules under which they work; they are also free to leave one WC and join another. However, the capital of any enterprise is not traded, nor does it move when any worker leaves the enterprise.

In a splendid piece of circular reasoning, neoclassical economists justify private ownership of capital on the ground that it is the capitalist who organizes production. This is a non sequitur. The capitalist organizes production precisely because he is a capitalist: he commands his own or borrowed funds that allow him to do so. In an economy consisting of worker cooperatives, teams of workers could organize production with funds borrowed from deposit banks or tax-funded investment banks.

It may be argued that the co-ops cannot match the performance of corporations because they have no skin in the game. This is not true. Unlike workers who receive fixed wages, the members of WCs may receive all or some fraction of their income that is tied to their co-op’s residual. Since they share in the coop’s decision-making, co-op members are more likely than wage-workers to identify with their enterprise. In themselves, these factors may help to reduce shirking. In addition, shirkers in co-ops are likely to come under moral censure from non-shirkers. If free-riding is seen as a problem, the WCs can empower the management to monitor the performance of members and work out rules for dismissing habitual shirkers. Collectively, co-ops may discourage shirking by discounting the earnings of new members who have a record of shirking. Shirkers may also be given the chance to expunge their record by improving their performance.

Since the capitalist is physically separable from his capital, this creates the possibility of separating ownership of capital in an enterprise from control over it. In medieval times, we observe trade partnerships in the Middle East—known as qirad in Arabic—where some partners advanced capital to traders who managed the task of conducting the trade. In 1932, Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means showed that ownership and control of most large-scale enterprises in the United States had ceased to reside in the same hands.

In activities without significant economies of scale and high costs of supervision, the capitalist may lend and/or rent his capital to workers and let them organize production. In agriculture, we find landlords who rent their lands to peasants instead of hiring wage-workers to organize production. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, capitalists in Britain set up textile factories with work benches that workers could rent to produce yarn and cloth on their own account. It is also common for laborers lacking capital to rent cars, trucks and rickshaws to produce transport services. Others rent space in commercial buildings to organize retail businesses.

A laborer cannot be physically separated from his working capacities or the services of his working capacities.

A laborer’s working capacities include his body, the metabolism that converts food into energy, his cognitive powers, memory, will, emotions, skills, intuition, and his powers of reasoning, sight, speech, hearing, taste and touch. The execution of any task by a worker in real time—whether this entails digging a trench, a sitar recital, performing surgery, crafting a violin, or time spent solving a yet unsolved mathematical conundrum—is the joint product of various manifestations or services of his working capacities.

Under a wage-contract, however, a laborer may sell the services of his working capacities to an employer. In addition, a self-employed person with access to some capital may employ his working capacities to produce services (such as haircuts) that he sells directly to buyers. Alternatively, as a carpenter, he may employ his working capacities to saw, bend, carve, plane, sand, screw together, and polish timber into chairs, and then sell the chairs for a profit. In both cases, the laborer, will likely receive the market wage for his labor and a similar return on the capital he employs in his enterprise.

Some exceptions to the inseparability of a laborer from his laboring capacities may also be noted. If medical technology permits, he may sell or donate his organs or tissues for transplantation to another person. However, a person is unlikely to consent to such transplantations, except when this promises to save the life of a loved one. Of course, without the living person’s consent, or after he dies or is killed, the possibilities become endless.

The first asymmetry we have just described leads to another. 

The separability of the capitalist from his capital nudges us to explore egalitarian re-arrangements of the ownership of capital. Should such rearrangements occur, the capitalists will only lose their claim to the surplus of capitalist enterprises, but they will retain all their rights as citizens and as members of WCs in the new economy. Should they also possess some valuable skills, the WCs will recognize and reward these skills without any prejudice arising from their past history as capitalists.

On the other hand, a laborer cannot be separated from his laboring capacities without also losing his freedom. The capitalist can take ownership of the laboring capacities of legally free laborers only after he takes ownership of their persons for some part of a day, that is, by turning them into wage-slaves.

Importantly, the absence of any integral or visceral connection between the capitalist and his capital points to the potential for reorganizing the ownership of capital on an egalitarian basis. It would be disingenuous to think that the capitalists themselves are not aware of this potential for egalitarian rearrangements of the ownership of capital. In addition, we may surmise that the capitalists know that the workers too—perhaps, with help from their protagonists in the intellectual classes—are aware of this vulnerability.

Given all of the above, we may surmise that capitalists have always been at work—no doubt with help from self-serving economists—to obfuscate this vulnerability and, simultaneously, to harness the coercive powers of the state to protect their pivotal position in the capitalist system. Since the actual use of coercion is costly, the capitalists employ all the forces at their command to convince the workers of the superiority of an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production. However, should the workers start questioning this ‘natural order,’ the capitalists are prepared to call on the machinery of the state—especially the courts, police and prisons—to knock the workers until they back the capitalist narrative.

Which of the two classes—capitalists or workers—is likely to organize production in a capitalist economy? 

In the 1950s, after nearly a century of mathematical ‘modling,’ neoclassical economists concluded that they had worked out the contours of an imaginary economy that would serve as the ideological fortress of capitalism. Markets in this economy instantaneously reach an equilibrium that is unique, stable and efficient in the sense that no person can be made better off without making at least one person worse off. Capital and labor in this economy receive their just deserts: that is to say, there is no exploitation of labor. In the words of Paul Samuelson, in this economy “it really did not matter who hires whom; so have labor hire ‘capital.’”

The message of the neoclassicals to the capitalists is: Don’t let your hard work as bosses give you a bad conscience. It gives you no advantage. The message to the workers is: Why bother with organizing production; let the capitalists worry about this. Enjoy your hassle-free life as workers; you have nothing to gain from losing your chains. These charming results hold only in perfectly competitive markets in which capitalists can costlessly write and enforce complete employment contracts.

In the real world, however, production is nearly always organized by capitalist bosses. Hurling what he thinks is a challenge to Karl Marx,  David Landes asks “if [capitalist] bosses make (cream off) so much money, why shouldn’t boss-free enterprises (cooperatives, collectives, small self-employed workers, and the like) be able to outdo those capitalistic units that pay so heavy a toll to owners and managers?” Landes imagines that he is setting up a test of the feasibility of workers organizing production. He is challenging boss-free enterprises to organize production in capitalist economies under property rights, institutions and rules established by capitalists. Now, since worker co-ops do not—with rare exceptions—organize production in capitalist economies, this supposedly ‘proves’ that they cannot compete with capitalists in organizing production.

Landes forgets that workers cannot organize production because they have been stripped of the means of production. Since they cannot offer any collateral, they also cannot borrow money or rent capital. Moreover, financing the establishment of WCs is not only a financial issue. The economic and political power of capitalists is built around their class monopoly over production. Why would they dilute this class monopoly by lending capital to workers? It is unlikely that capitalist guilt over exploitation of workers ever reaches the point at which they become willing to commit hara-kiri.

Is the separation of capitalists from capital unjust?

Can any economic system be considered just that has a tendency to place—and often ends up placing—the means of production in the hands of a tiny minority of capitalists, thereby endowing them with the power to organize production not in the interests of the workers or society but exclusively in the interests of the capitalists. Depending on conditions in the labor market, and driven by the profit imperative, the capitalist may hire and fire workers at will. In addition, he may demand that his hired hands put in long hours of work, six days a week, quicken their pace of work to keep up with the machines, and take no breaks in the workplace, even if they have to piss in a bottle or wear diapers.

In a capitalist economy, moreover, workers are disposable, unless they have acquired skills specific to the enterprise in which they work; they may be laid off or fired whenever they are not needed. Can an economic system be just that nearly always fails to provide some workers with employment, and during a depression may fail to provide employment to as much as a third of the workers; when it does provide employment, many of these jobs may not offer the workers a living wage. Can an economic system be humane whose commitment to profit-making demands that workers be fired when they fall sick or are injured even when the sickness and injury are caused by hazards of the work and the workplace? It is ironic that while wage-workers in capitalist economies are legally free and wage-work is considered to be superior to slavery, the capitalists do not have any intrinsic interest in the livelihood and health of their workers that slave-owners have in their slaves and their families.

Similarly, while wage-workers are legally free, they lose their freedom the moment they enter the workplace. The neoclassical economist will predictably protest that a wage-worker remains free even at work since he is free to leave his present job whenever he wishes; if he does not quit that is because he chooses to stay. Sorry: this is a flawed inference. The neoclassical economist is always liberal in making assumptions; when he needs a can opener he just assumes that he has one. Hence, neoclassical economics assumes that workers face no costs in moving to another job that he prefers over his current job.

However, the ability to switch jobs at will does not overcome the lack of freedom at the workplace. A worker cannot escape the lack of freedom at the workplace because this is an unavoidable condition of capitalist employment, unless the nature of a job makes monitoring of work very costly. The lack of freedom at work cannot be blamed on technology; the capitalists have been choosing technology, layout of factories and offices, and work organization that truncate worker autonomy. Bosses can monitor their employees’ pace of work, even when they work remotely.

Conservatives and liberals are likely to view with alarm any talk about the rearrangement of capitalist property rights in the means of production.

Although such alarm is to be expected from the historical beneficiaries of capital accumulation over the last half a millennium, this shows societal amnesia about the horrendous crimes against humanity that attended, and still attend, the expropriation of great masses of humans—men, women, children and the unborn—to finance and support the creation of capitalists and capitalist power in Western Europe and North America. Karl Marx applied the moniker of ‘primitive accumulation’ to the “historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production.”

The capitalist organization of British agriculture, which began in the late fifteenth century, was accomplished over the next three centuries through successive expropriations of the peasantry either by force or through laws passed by the largest landowners—formerly feudal lords—in the British parliament. The free peasantry that had emerged in England by the late fourteenth century earned a living from cultivating strips of arable land, but they also depended crucially on access to commons for firewood, pasturing their cattle, gathering berries and mushrooms, and catching game and fish. Once the growth of woolen manufactures in Flanders raised the price of wool, English landowners began to privatize the commons, either by force or passing enclosure acts that denied peasants access to the commons, and converted them into sheep pastures; this forced some peasants to seek wage-work in agriculture, while others abandoned their lands to seek wage-work in the towns. In addition, the large landowners also began to enforce gaming laws to ride roughshod over the farms of peasants resulting in losses to their crops.

Next consider a historical rearrangement of property rights during the nineteenth century that is more germane to the subject of this essay. I am referring to the large-scale separation—in the Americas during the nineteenth century—of a very important class of capitalists from their capital invested in slaves. In August 1791, the black slaves in Saint-Domingue—a French colony that was a source of immense profits to France—began a successful rebellion against slave-owning capitalists—who after defeating two massive invasions ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801 and 1802, declared the establishment in 1804 of the Republic of Haiti ruled by former black slaves. Do we object to this transfer of property rights in slaves from plantations owners to the slaves themselves?

In the nineteenth century, we encounter several more examples of the separation of capitalists from their capital invested in slaves. In 1833, Britain transferred the ownership rights of capitalists in humans to the humans themselves in nearly all its colonial possessions. Some of the northern states in the USA, following the War of Independence in 1776, began passing laws that effected similar transfers of ownership rights in slaves. In 1861, in the midst of the American Civil War, slavery was also abolished in the Southern States. Brazil, perhaps the largest slave-based economy in history, abolished slavery in 1888. In general, where slavery was abolished under law, the cash compensation was less than the market value of the slaves.

The principal results of this essay are easily summarized.

The capitalist is physically separable from the capital that he owns, but the laborer cannot be parted from his laboring capacities.

The first part of the previous statement establishes the feasibility of separating the capitalist from his capital. Indeed, the capitalist (qua capitalist) is a rentier since he does not contribute the services of any of his present working capacities to the enterprise in which he owns capital. The capitalist’s claim to profits is rooted in a legal relationship, not an economic relationship.

Au contraire, the services of a laborer are inseparable from his person. This means that in order to maximize his profits, the capitalist who hires labor must gain control over the laborer’s person and his working capacities in the workplace and—if necessary and feasible—off the workplace. In other words, the capitalist logic demands that the laborer be stripped of his autonomy once he enters the workplace. Although the worker is free in theory to choose his employer, this freedom does not restore the autonomy that he enjoyed in his work and workplace as a self-employed peasant, artisan, peddler or shopkeeper.

A clear-eyed focus on the asymmetry in the two binaries—the separability of the capitalist from capital and inseparability of the laborer from his working capacities—suggests significant gains that are likely to flow from an alternative organization of production that transfers ownership and control over capital from capitalist enterprises to worker cooperatives.

A detailed discussion of these gains is a subject for another essay. However, broadly speaking, these gains are likely to flow from two forms of democratization that will attend the transfer of capital from the capitalists to the workers. First, there is the political democratization that will flow from the transformation of the capitalist enterprises to worker cooperatives. A political system that grows out of the interests and actions of workers and worker co-ops is unlikely to be hijacked by sectional interests.

Secondly, there is the democratization in the workplace. A variety of benefits are likely to flow to workers from the establishment of co-ops. These may include sharing by members in policy-making, creation of a culture of egalitarianism, improvements in working conditions, equal access of all members and their families to education, health and social services, less hierarchy in the organization of work, sharing and phasing out of tedious work, and greater income inequality. An economy consisting of worker co-ops will nurture cooperation, in the workplace and outside it. Once profits are dethroned as the only or chief objective driving production and technological change, the economy will have a chance to redirect its focus from endless capital accumulation towards a thousand improvements in the quality of life for everyone.

M. SHAHID ALAM is professor of economics at Northeastern University. This is an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Macmillan, November 2009). Contact me at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.

Farmers Reject Phony Plebiscite

That should be the headline in the papers today, but it isn't. The headlines are full of government spin on their failed barley plebiscite.

A total of 62 per cent of just over 29,000 farmers who cast eligible ballots said they wanted the board out of the barley market altogether, or for the board to participate in a competitive market. Another 38 per cent said they wanted to maintain the status quo.

Farmers overwhelmingly rejected Chuck Strahl's plebiscite as it was not sanctioned by the Wheat Board. About 86,000 ballots were mailed out based on crop insurance data.

Now at least in some reports those ballots were as high as 89,000. That means if 29,000 farmers voted even with my terrible reputation at math that works out to one third voted not even fifty percent as the government claims.

Strahl said KPMG, the firm that handled the plebiscite for the government, made every effort to ensure only eligible votes were counted. Voter turnout was just over 50 per cent. Strahl said many eligible voters said they didn't bother to vote because they only sell their barley to feed lots, not the wheat board.

So if two thirds of prairie farmers don't vote that means they support the status quo.

The real number that supports the Conservatives opposition to the existence of the farmer owned producer coop; the Canadian Wheat Board they can only muster up amongst their Reform Party base in Southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, 15.2% of the total who voted. Not even the total who could vote.

Contrary to Strahl's math; where he combines pro-choice with anti-Wheat Board,and proudly announces that his side won with 62%, Wayne Easterly the Agriculture critic for the Liberals was justified in pointing out that the numbers could equally show support for the Wheat Board 87.2%. Since those that answered question number two wanted both choice and the Wheat Board.

As Neil Waugh points out in the Edmonton Sun;

Another 15.2% said get rid of the board altogether when it came to the barley business. Still, it was enough to carry the day.

In the four western provinces, where the CWB monopoly rules, the overall result saw only 37.8% back the so-called "single desk," while pro choice hit 49.4%.

But when the Saskatchewan numbers were broken out - where 15,327 farmers voted - 45% chose to extend the monopoly.

In Manitoba, where it appeared a boycott was in the works, 50.6% of only 3,703 barley producer cast ballots saying leave it be.

In B.C., the vote was 49.4% pro choice. But only 156 ballots were in the boxes.

Interesting that Waugh fails to note the Alberta number of votes, in his article.
Well in all the rest of the provinces, total votes other than Alberta; 19,186 That leaves Alberta with less than 10,000 votes and Waugh fails to break them down.

They were 9,881 total votes. It was in Alberta that the plebiscite got 15% support for getting rid of the Wheat Board, the same number as the national result. In fact all of Strahl's numbers are for Alberta.

They are not the reality of the prairie position on the Wheat Board.

Farmer support for Option 1 the Wheat Board was;

Manitoba 50.6%
Saskatchewan; 45.1%
B.C.; 42%

Farmer support for Option 2 market to Wheat Board or on my own;
Manitoba; 34.5%
Saskatchewan; 42.1%
B.C.; 49%

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan the majority of farmers support the Wheat Board, their farmer owned producer cooperative.

Only in B.C. is it the reverse, but the government in its desperation looks at percentages instead of core numbers. B.C. only had 156 votes compared to Manitoba and Saskatchewan's 19,0000 votes.

That's because the Conservatives included B.C. making this not a prairie farm vote but a Western one.

Just as Alberta's vote skews the numbers.

For Option 1: 21.4%
For Option 2: 63.4%

Prairie farmers face their battle to maintain their producer cooperative not with Ottawa, but with Alberta and its party in Ottawa.

The government asked three questions. Period. And there was no clear winner. The government has to resort to arithmetricks.

The reality is that 57,000-60,000 farmers abstained from voting, a boycott was called, and they did not vote in the governments fixed plebiscite. That is twice as many as voted, and a clear rejection of Strahl and the Alberta Reform Party Farm lobby.

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A Peoples Program for Alberta

The Klein government has no new ideas of what to do with the growing surplus. Let alone any ideas about how to actually create an Alberta Advantage that benefit's the people of Alberta, and not just their Calgary Corporate Cronies, I thought I would offer my own Modest Proposal.

The government is asking for public input into changes in the Labour Relations Act, and the future of Post Secondary Education.

So here are mine. As well as proposals dealing with living wages, taxes, municipalities, cooperatives, investment funds, etc.

It's based on the simple principle:

Labour Produces all Wealth

All Wealth Belongs to those who Labour

Flat Tax of 10% on all incomes of $100,000 and over

No Income Tax on anyone earning less than $100,000

All resource Industries will pay 60% royalty fees and 60% tax on all after sales profit.

ATB and Credit Unions will loan up to $10,000 to all Albertans who may wish to start a business, a coop etc. interest free for five years.

Elimination of the Labour Relations Board, all contract disputes will be decided by between unions, employers and independent mediation agreed to by each party.

Anti-Scab legislation, no employer has the right to hire replacement workers in advent of a lock out or strike.

A Living Wage $14 per hour. All employers will be responsible for paying all benefits for workers they employ.

Elimination of all Health Care premiums, and user fees, and a pharmacare, dental and hearing eye care plan for all Albertans.

A provincial retirement benefit plan to compliment CPP and OAS.

A provincial insurance corporation for all insurance in the province, drivers, personal, housing, tenant, non profit org., pets and farm animals.

A guaranteed income for all Albertans of $20,000 a year. COLA to the national poverty standard. Elimination of AISH and Welfare Programs.

Tripartite Apprenticeship programs developed with unions/professional associations and employers and the government to train in trades and all professions, to be inclusive of all Albertans regardless of race, sex, sexual preference, etc. Applies to High School programs and post secondary education programs.

Encourage Labour Sponsored Investment Funds for Venture Capital. A fund created by unions and professional associations through ATB or Credit Union, with secure investment guarantee from province up to $60,000 per investment. Applicable as tax credit provincially and federally.

Low cost housing projects developed through Venture Capital Fund and ATB/Credit Unions with investment guarantee from provincial government.

Full funding of public daycare, pre school education programs, K-12 education and Post Secondary education.

No tuition fees for post secondary education.

Public access to all post secondary programs.

Student loans with no interest for five years after graduation.

Transferable credits between all post secondary institutions in the province.

Tax Credit to Businesses that provide daycare for their workers.

Expand the legislature to have enough MLA’s for every 10,000 people. Proportional Representation. No bills can be passed without a vote in the Legislature. Guaranteed sittings of the Legislature for a minimum of 120 days per year.

Full public funding for all political parties, with campaign limits for spending.

ATB and credit union funding for worker, producer and consumer cooperative businesses, with provincial guarantees for up to $100,000 in start up funding.

Full funding for Women’s shelters in the province with requirement of family counseling for all Men involved in abusive relationships.

Legalization of prostitution, no one under 18 may work in the sex industry in Alberta. Regulation of the industry in cooperation with Sex Trade Workers Union.

All medical abortions will be paid in full.

All public utilities will be under community control. This will reduce provincial funding to cities.

Fully funded public transportation for cities, and intercity travel.

Provincial and municipal land banking for low cost housing.

Put the Alberta Stock Exchange under National Governance.

Alternative Energy Investment and Tax Credits.

Arts and Culture production Investment and Tax Credits.

Low interest loans for Community Redevelopment Programs, revitalization of decrepit urban space.

No Child Labour.Anyone younger than 16 cannot work (excluding paper routes and neighbourhood chores).

All Public Boards, Health Boards, University, Technical Colleges, etc. will be made up of elected representatives. In the case of Post Secondary Institutions this will include representatives of students, faculty. In case of other boards, it will include representatives of employee groups and the public.

No Private Parking. All parking will be the responsibility of the municipality, and funds from parking will go to the municipality.

All municipalities will hold open budget hearings, and planning sessions, infrastructure plans and budget plans may be voted on by referendum.

36 hour work week. All hours after that are overtime.

All Albertans will have the right to join a union, regardless of their employment status, including contract workers, sales people, taxi drivers, farm workers and nannies.

Upon successful organizing of 51% of workers in any particular industry a first contract will automatically come into effect between the union and the employer.