Siemens Says – This is why Farmers Must Vote to elect Marketing Choice candidates in the upcoming CWB board directors’ elections because Freedom of the Press is at stake. .

 The Canadian Wheat Board has refused my registration on two CWB media events, effectively banning me from covering, reporting, and commenting on the Wheat Board’s activities from a point of view the majority of farm media and mainstream media seldom take.

 I write for three and sometimes five farm newspapers weekly and monthly, broadcast on several radio stations and radio networks daily in the United States and Canada, posting to my SiemensSays.Com website, writing in the FarmWatch newsletter, and sharing the information on talks I give in Canada and the USA.

At the end of July, I normally did what I have been doing for most of 37 years, register for the media conference the board uses to report on that crop year’s activities. Thinking nothing of it, I sent the registration email to Dwayne Marling, a good friend from his previous work at the Manitoba Pork Council. Several hours before the conference was to start, I received an email from Maureen Fitzhenry, Manager of Media Relations with the CWB, and you can read it here.

“Harry: Our event today is for accredited media only. We will be restricting our questions to those reporters. Maureen Fitzhenry.”

Well, in my reply, and several subsequent emails I listed the media outlets I report and commentate regularly for, asking her why she considered me an unaccredited media person. I never received a reply and Maureen had always been prompt in here responses to me on previous issues.

Then I received another email from a CWB media person suggesting if I was interested in attending or covering by telephone, the CWB’s so-called pasta collaborating announcement, I should register. I hit reply on my Gmail account to John Lyons at the Wheat Board requesting he register me as he had suggested.

Obviously, John had been waiting for my registration because he immediately forwarded it to Maureen Fitzhenry because in his forwarding address to Maureen, he said ‘Here’s Harry’. Well, again, it did not take very long and I received my answer to my request to register from CWB Media Relations Manager, Maureen Fitzhenry.

“Harry: we reserve the right to invite or exclude any individuals or groups from our corporate events. We will not be accepting your registration.”

Maureen Fitzhenry, CWB media relations manager

In all honesty, this is restricting – No, let me rephrase that – Banning those media outlets that I report and commentate for, from covering firsthand, the on-goings of the monopolized so-called marketing arm for Western Canadian farmers, the only ones who get jail time when they deliver bread wheat and malting barley anywhere else than but to the CWB.

No, wonder some districts in the CWB director elections have up to three and four candidates running for the pro-marketing choice position. Take for example District 10 in Manitoba where the incumbent, Bill Toews of Kane, Manitoba has four marketing choice farmers running to defeat him and his monopolistic views, like banning media outlets who may take opposing views to his, and the CWB. Heading the pack is Rolf Penner of Morris, Harvey Vaags, a City of Winnipeg policeman and a farmer at Dugald representing that area, Barry Reimer of Boissevain, and Curtis Sims of MacGregor. That is good representation from right across the district.

However, the amazing thing here is each farmer chose to run on his own, not coerced by any organization, or collaborated strategy. These men are angry, fed up with their eroded freedoms, and know their friends and neighbours think the same.

Yes, vote one for your first choice, two for the second, three for your third, and four, for your fourth choice because the preferential vote-counting procedure takes that as a positive for your first choice. Oh by the way, tell you fellow farmers to do the same.