Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Erin compares the numbers behind the NDP and Sask Party platforms, with the one major difference being the windfall potash profits the Wall government wants to keep out of public hands.

- Bruce Johnstone highlights a few more of the harmful effects that figure to follow from the Cons' choice to scrap the Canadian Wheat Board:

But the legislation will do much more than destroy the world's last remaining "state trading enterprise" with single desk powers. It will do irreparable harm to Canada's reputation as the marketer of quality wheat and barley.

By dint of its marketing clout and the single desk, the Canadian Wheat Board can guarantee delivery of specific quantities and qualities of grain to customers in 70 countries where it does business. No private grain company, no matter how large, can do that.

It will damage, perhaps fatally, the network of branchlines that provides loading sites for producer cars and the shortline railways that operate on them. Those producer cars saved Prairie farmers an average of $1,200 per railcar, money that will now be flowing to the grain companies.

By removing the CWB's regulated access to grainhandling facilities, the Harper government has left farmers to the tender mercies of the grain companies and railways.

In the short-term, the elimination of the single desk will also cost Canadian taxpayers million of dollars a year. The legislation calls for the Port of Churchill to be subsidized to the tune of $5 million a year to support grain shipment for five years and another $4 million over three years for maintenance.

In fact, the cost of winding up the CWB could cost taxpayers many more millions - in severance to employees, legal costs, etc. All this to get rid of a profitable enterprise that wasn't costing taxpayers a nickel.

- Paul Dewar's proposal to bring municipalities to the table with the federal and provincial governments looks like an idea well worth discussing in its own right. But it makes for a particularly noteworthy contrast against a Con government which doesn't even want to engage with the provinces in the first place.

- Finally, Jordan Press discusses the need for citizenship education to encourage students to actually participate in political discussions rather than merely memorizing names and dates.