Eduard Hiebert

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Moving Forward... Next Steps

Moving MCGA to be the farm organisation it ought to be.

Dear Fellow Farmers and the Concerned Public!

  1. First Priority, Getting Out the Vote

  2. Voting Strategically, Getting the Most out of Your Ballot

  3. Fixing the Vote-splitting Loophole

  4. Exposing Ongoing Questionable MCGA Electoral Practices

First Priority, Getting Out the Vote

As a first priority, there are only a few more days left to affect the MCGA election.  The deadline for MCGA's election coordinator MNP to receive the ballots is on or before the close of MNP's work day on December 10, 2007.

Increasing the voter turnout is among the easiest ways to affect a positive change regarding the leadership and direction of MCGA's directors.  Past Election turnout has been very poor, even under 10%!  The last time barely 17%!

Every individual farmer you can encourage to seek out their ballot and vote and this farmer in turn contacts several others to do likewise, with repeated but a few more times, can easily make the difference!

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Voting Strategically, Getting the Most out of Your Ballot

If an overwhelming majority of farmers would vote, and the election is fair, Bruce Dalgarno in my opinion would be history!

As the voter turnout becomes lower, the possibility of votes-splits accruing to the advantage of those who have control to keep the election process considerably short of the civic election standard, increases dramatically.

Under those circumstances, voting for all 4 candidates, other than Bruce, is not in your best interest, due to the vulnerability of the current ballot system to vote-splitting.

I would encourage the remaining voters only vote for Clayton and Dale. Here's why.

For example, lets say approximately 20% of farmers (roughly 2000) want Clayton Harder and Dale Gryba as their first choice but also vote for Bob Pettinger and Barry Chappel.

However, even if as few as just Bob Pettinger and Barry Chappel vote for themselves, then each of those two have 2001 votes while Clayton Harder and Dale Gryba only have 2000.  Depending on the vote that Dalgarno gets, this group of 2000 farmers, by also voting for Bob and Barry, have thereby increased the likelihood that one of Clayton or Dale will not be elected.

My sense is it would be better for farmers to have these two on the MCGA board even if Dalgarno is elected, than to have a board that does not include both of Clayton and Dale.

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Fixing the Vote-splitting Loophole

The 2000 farmers could have a much more powerful ballot, if instead of being limited to marking up to 4 choices with an x, farmers be allowed to mark their ballot preferentially, voting 1, 2, 3...   In this way the above 2000 producers could mark their ballot preferentially and still vote for 4 people and prevent the situation where their ballot contributes to a vote-split as per above.  Note, this change would require a by-law amendment through the regular by-law change process.

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Exposing Ongoing Questionable MCGA Electoral Practices

The last time I saw the voters list, a significant minority of people like Bruce Dalgarno where on the voters list at least twice.  Once in their own name and once under their corporation.

No-one has yet provided me with a business rational why someone who is incorporated and therefore taxed at a lower rate, would still continue to sell Canola under their own name.  However those that had improper control of MCGA earlier put this type of duplicate voter eligibility into the bylaws and this matter as one among several ought to be addressed.  And with the past games being played by MCGA, MCGA ought to be required to release the figures on how many who voted actually have such duplicate ballots and how many checkoff dollars are received from such duplicates compared to the corporate checkoff received from these farmers.  For example was it but a dollar or two?

There are further anomalies taking place.

If anyone can provide me with further specific examples, including those who according to the rules do not qualify to get a ballot but did, if you are one of these or know of cases, please make contact in confidence, including on a confidential basis, if so preferred.

Please call 864-2102.
Eduard Hiebert

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