Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 13, 1975, Winnipeg, Manitoba Scheme cuts costs Winnipeg free press thursday february 13, 1975 continued under hat kind of system h e indicated Farmers who leased land from the Crown would make More Money than Hose landowners who faced High mortgage costs but he Aid such a program would be a wide open one. Or. Yuskiw made the com meals during exchanges with l r Jack Hare and Doug Mcrorie Belli representing the Winnipeg chamber of com Pierce. Or. Mcrorie said such a program would Benefit Only certain Farmers. Lie argued that advantageous leases might come to be Given out on the basis of a Fanner s political affiliation. T h e people of Manitoba would be bearing the Cost of he said no one was talking about confiscation. No one was suggesting that Farmers be compelled to sell their land to the government or to lease land from the government. The Only Way to keep land i the control of the people Manitoba is for the govern Hie beneficial rates through a lower return on their invest the Board of the Manitoba de elopement corporation said. He said the Only safeguard needed is the right of the ten ant Farmer to buy his Ian from the government. There is no Way today for Young Man without financial resources to Start farm in unless lie can lease land i Hunt said. He said it in t ber oficial for a Fanner to take 01 a heavy mortgage on his land ment while benefits in the form of lower prices on farm produce would largely pass out of the province or. Mcrorie said. Asked by or. Yuskiw whether Farmers should t have a Choice of renting land from the government or. Hare replied that they should have a Choice of owning their land or of rent ing it from the private sector but not from the government. Or. Hare said he does t be Lieve everyone who wants to farm should be Given a free Opportunity to do so. If the desire to own land is Strong enough in an individual he will somehow do it. Desire makes for hard he said there Are few Good Farmers who would want to rent land for a whole lifetime. The basis of the agriculture credit corporation s program is to give a Farmer guaranteed tenure except in cases of abuse of the lease for life with the probability of passing asked by . Pete Adam nip member for Ste. Rose t the lease on to his children or. Yuskiw said. Several times during the Day exchanges Between or. Hare and new democratic party members of the commit tee became heated. The chamber had made a number of wild and extreme statements about the Agricula t u r e department s working paper on land use t. W. Johannson nip member Jor St. Matthews said. He referred specifically to a newspaper report that said the chamber Council criticized the working paper As being collectivist in the manner of Sta Lin of the 1930s. Or. Hare said he was t aware of anyone making that statement but that the ultimate of the kind of thinking in the working paper is total owner ship by the or Johanison said he could compare the chamber to Hitler in the use of the big lie tech but he said he would t at the present rate the comment on two previous briefs to the committee which suggested licensing of Farmer to control land speculation or Hunt said he saw nothing wrong with the idea. Conservative Leader Sidney s p i v a k asked whether Thi rights of the state should take precedence Over the rights o an individual Farmer and family upon the death of a Farmer. He said land lease Are terminated 30 Days after the Farmers death if it occurs during certain months. Or. Hunt said the govern ment would have no motive for removing a widow and children from a farm provide that a member of the family was capable of farming the land. The termination clause is in the lease so that a year s crop will not be lost because o a death he said. Seven briefs were still to be heard when the committee adjourned for the Day therefore an additional Winnipeg hearing was scheduled for monday wednesday s hearing was the second in Winnipeg and one a number in several parts of the province. Ince is acquiring land he said it would take 300 years to buy All the land in the province and that assumes willingness by Farmers to sell and that no Young Farmer will take up the option to buy contained in his lease. The agriculture credit corporation does t approach Farmers to sell their land he said and no charges to the contrary have Ever been substantiated. Only 40 per cent of the applications made to have the province Purchase land have resulted in sales he said. Or. Yuskiw produced a confidential 1968 Manitoba trea s u r y Board working paper which suggested assigning numerical values to government programs according to the Impact they would have upon the government s Security in each constituency. The paper was adopted As policy by the progressive conservative government of the Day resources minister Sidney Green said. Or. Yuskiw noted that or. Hare was a conservative candidate in St. Boniface during the last Federal election and asked if his distrust of govern ments was based on his knowl Edge of conservative policy. All we have heard is a lot of political the Agri culture minister said. In its Brief to the committee presented by or. Hare the chamber of Commerce favored private ownership of land. To suggest that the inter ests of the Farmers would be better served by state owner ship of land is to totally reject our society As we know it and is a Point of View totally inconsistent with both the wishes of the farming population and the infrastructure within which they operate. The Issue of foreign owner ship in the chamber s View is a Point of some concern but regretfully the working paper has chosen to use this less than urgent problem As a pre text for exploiting the concept of government ownership of our Rural land the Brief contended that the working paper was mistaken in assuming that production efficiency decreases As the size pcs May keep land Yuskiw since 1969, the Manitoba government has t thrown anyone off land leased from the prov Ince because they happen to be opposition members of the legislature agriculture minister Samuel ;