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By Noel Hyslip

When I watch the evening news, I can’t help but notice that our prime minister sheds tears while making apologies for the poor leadership of previous politicians.

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At the same time, he will sometimes offer large sums of cash as compensation for governments’ wrongdoing.

I too am a victim of wrongful actions by past governments, as is every western farmer who suffered financial loss at the hands of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.

The CWB monopoly was created in September 1943 to hold down wheat prices during the Second World War. The war ended in 1945. The wheat board monopoly ended 67 years later, in 2012.

In 1947, Senator Walter Aseltine calculated that in the first 3½ years of CWB operations, western wheat growers suffered $535 million in lost income. The monopoly was supposed to end after the war, but Ottawa instead entered into wheat agreements with foreign buyers — often at bargain prices.