The Canadian Wheat Board and It's Big Bossy Brother (Day 68)

Topic of choice today: politics. Here is my rant, born of frustration with how the government is acting. For clarification, the Canadian Wheat Board is a crown corporation and is therefore technically run by the government. It required that all prairie farmers sell it their wheat and barley. I'm not sure how many countries have crown corporations so I thought it would be a good thing to clarify.
The Canadian prairies have long been ruled by the Canadian Wheat Board, the CWB. While a large portion of prairie farmers toiled away under CWB rule, having to sell their wheat and barley to only CWB at CWB prices, farmers in Ontario and other provinces had choices whether to sell to a government organization or not to. Being from the prairies, I took the monopoly that CWB had (only in the prairies) as a proof that Ottawa hates the prairies. Well, not hates so much as has little regard for.
Summary so far: Prairie farmers had to sell to the government. Ontarian farmers could decide to sell to the government or sell privately. There were feelings that the federal government dislikes the prairies.

Recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been super determined to get rid of the CWB utterly and completely...by next spring. The current plan is to start a new crown corporation to serve in CWB's stead as one of the options farmers will have. My question is, why not just downsize the CWB? Let the farmers decide who they want to sell their grain to. That is the issue, yes? The government could cut CWB operating costs based on voluntary CWB use by farmers. About 51% of farmers want to keep CWB anyway. A new organization takes time to organize, develop, and function. It takes money to rent the space, train the people, and figure out all the businessy stuff behind what happens (like the purpose statement, contacts, etc.). That just seems like wasted effort when there is a pre-existing building, employees, and business plan.

Summary: The federal government wants the CWB gone now. They want to make a new organization rather than downsizing the old one.

CWB is of course kicking up a fuss...so the Ottawa government is replacing their elected board...which is made up of farmers (who better to represent farmers than farmers). CWB plans to take them to court. Manitoba kicked up a fuss too, but the repercussions haven't occurred yet. Getting rid of the CWB means over 400 jobs lost in Winnipeg and more in the port of Churchill. Message to Manitoban's from all of this = the feds hate you and are treating you as a child that needs to be chastized.

Summary of this: Everyone involved is acting like children instead of discussing things like adults. The government is making themselves look bad.

What can be learned from this? Well, clearly there was a better way to deal with the issue. Now everyone is all tense from disagreeing with each other and they aren't willing to compromise. Is CWB's rebellion against Ottawa a good reason to oust an elected board in favour of government employees? Even though many farmers, somewhere near half, have wanted to sell their grain on the open market for a long time now, is  that a good reason to destroy one organization and replace it with another in a matter of months? What kind of organization will that even be able to be? Business decisions that make that kind of business happen take months all on their own. Then there is the hiring, the training, the contacts to make, the schedule to figure out, etc. etc. Business isn't and shouldn't be treated like something that will magically work. Yes some do, but the really important ones, the ones that support society, don't magically work. People put lots of effort into making them work. Can the government make their forced plan work? How will it affect farmers? And lastly, in a resource based economy, how will it affect the rest of us?