And now for something completely different

At first glance, the subject of the Canadian Wheat Board is pretty far removed from the subject of Human Rights Commissions. But they are not too-distantly related. Both have to do with our personal freedom -- the freedom to say and think what we want, and the freedom to sell our goods and services to whom we want. And both sets of freedoms are being tread upon by an obsolete, thin-skinned bureaucracy with waning political cover.

I should acknowledge that I first read about these gaping price differences -- and Rod Flaman's comments -- on Kate's site.

You can read the Op-Ed here. Here are some excerpts:

Oil and gold aren't the only Canadian commodities trading at record highs. Prairie grains are, too, driven both by a hungry world and by new demands for bio-fuels. A bushel of prairie wheat has broken double-digits on the world market. That's like oil breaking the $100-a-barrel barrier. Times are good again.

Except that farmers who happen to live in Canada's Prairie provinces aren't allowed to sell their wheat at market prices. They're compelled by an obsolete law to sell their wheat to the federal government's Canadian Wheat Board, at fixed government prices. Right now, the CWB pays farmers just over $8 a bushel for Hard Red Spring, which sells across the border in Montana for $13.51 a bushel, more than a 60 per cent premium. Canadian farmers get $12 a bushel for Canada Western Amber Durum. In Montana, the same grain sells for a whopping $20.34. That's almost 70 per cent more.

Farmers who dare to truck their own grain across the border - or even across the street - to sell it themselves are arrested.

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The terms on which the CWB sells its wheat remain secret for "competitive reasons," but last year, the head of the Algerian Interprofessional Grain Board, a large CWB customer, let the cat out of the bag. In a newspaper interview, Mohamed Kacem boasted that "our country receives preferential prices, which save Algeria tens of dollars per tonne purchased." So it's really the Algerian Wheat Board, or the Chinese Wheat Board.

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When he led the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper described the CWB as a "draconian wheat monopoly that for years has relied on force and fear to exist." Now that he's Prime Minister, he has the chance to end that board's monopoly, and let farmers finally reap the financial harvest they deserve.