Dear Editor
One promise Stephen Harper has made is being carried out, little by little, without much attention from the media. That is the promise he made to a right-wing think-tank in the United States regarding his plan to change Canada so that they would afterward not be able to recognize it.
The front page news item in the Jan. 18 edition of the Regional Optimist, "PFRA pasture patrons to meet Jan 23," seemed - at first reading - to be somewhat innocuous, especially to a person like me, where life on the farm is only a distant memory. On reading again, and further, it became clear to me that, this move by Harper, and his minister of agriculture (our own Gerry Ritz) to dismantle a federal program that has worked well for over 75 years to the benefit of family farmers, various forms of wildlife and the ecology in numerous ways, fits in, alongside many others - such as the move to emasculate the Canadian Wheat Board - Harper's plan to change Canada.
This Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration Community Pastures System covers 87 pastures, including approximately 2.3 million acres, of which 62 pastures, including 1.78 million acres, are in Saskatchewan.
The first 10 community pastures to be dropped from the program by the Harper government are in Saskatchewan, so the Wall government will have to decide what to do with them. Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture Lyle Stewart, originally stated they would be sold at market value, but has later hedged on that idea a bit.
The "pasture patrons" meeting in Saskatoon will probably provide cover for whatever the Saskatchewan government has decided to do about it, now and in the future, when more community pastures are dropped from the program by Ritz and his boss.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
