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December 19, 2011

National GRAIN FARMERS UNCERTAIN OF FUTURE

New bill ends Wheat Board monopoly over Western Canada wheat and barley
Elvira Cruz
National Reporter Usually at this time of year, Don Connick starts figuring out what crops to grow on his Saskatchewan farm next spring, and he goes over variables like costs, weather and commodity prices. But this year hes facing a new variable that has ground his planning to a halt the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. Theres just this real cloud of uncertainty, Mr. Connick said from his 1,600-acre farm near Gull Lake, in southwestern Saskatchewan. This adds another great big humungous variable and makes it doubly or triply more difficult. Late Thursday the federal government received royal assent for Bill C-18, a law that ends the Wheat Boards 76-year monopoly over the sale of wheat and barley grown in Western Canada. The bigger issue for farmers is how to sell their grain next year. But private companies also started offering contracts Friday. Starting today, Viterra is pleased to offer bids to Western Canadian wheat, durum and barley producers, said Mayo Schmidt, CEO of Viterra Inc., a Calgarybased grain handling company. Farmers will now have to decide which way to go. The confusion has left many farmers unclear about who to turn to and whether everything will change again depending on a new court ruling.

An Ontarian grain farmer at his fields.

Tan Li/The Torontonian

EUTHANASIA CASE WEIGHS ON JUDGES MINDS, 18 YEARS ON

Gloria Taylor case triggers right-to-die debate
Clark Kent
National Reporter Jack Major can still see the silent ranks of disabled people, their wheelchairs ringing the Supreme Court of Canada as a courtroom full of lawyers debated the assisted suicide law in 1993. It was a haunting type of case, said Mr. Major, who was the Supreme Court judge whose vote tipped the balance in a 5-4 decision affirming the law. Eighteen years later, the polarizing question is heading back to the top court. A Vancouver judge finished hearing a test case on Friday launched by Gloria Taylor, a terminally ill B.C. woman. It was the first step of a journey that will ultimately compel the top court to grapple anew with whether the terminally ill can obtain help to end their lives. But the case is much more than just a replay of the unsuccessful challenge mounted in 1993 by another B.C. woman, Sue Rodriguez. Precedents do not last forever. The Supreme Court has taken to revisiting seminal judgments 15 or 20 years on, sometimes with different results. The court certainly has been known to overturn important Charter decisions, University of Ottawa law professor Carissima Mathen observed. I dont think the Rodriguez case would pose a big barrier in a case like this. The challengers are buoyed by a Supreme Court decision this fall that compelled the Harper government to keep a Vancouver supervised drug injection facility open, a ruling rooted in greater harm. The same harm reduction principle was at the core of a recent successful challenge in Ontario to prostitution laws that force prostitutes to endure the dangers of operating in seclusion.