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SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 74, No. 26 | $1.75
June 30, 2016
Farmers, grain companies warn railways be ready to move a big crop Western production could exceed the five-year average
manitobacooperator.ca
New life in Canada ‘a dream come true,’ couple says The Cabatingans are one of hundreds of young families now calling Neepawa and surrounding municipalities home
BY ALLAN DAWSON Co-operator staff
T
he prospects of another bumper crop this year have western Canadian grain companies and farm leaders warning the railways to be ready. They want to avoid a repeat of the colossal and costly backlog of 2013-14 when crop production set a new record by a large margin. “We know it’s going to be a big crop and the grain companies are doing everything possible to be ready for it,” Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA), said in an interview June 22. “This year’s crop, based on the probabilities, is going to be higher than average. “If we run into a problem it is going to be for the same reasons we ran into a problem in 2013-14. Nothing has changed in a significant way to the policy environment or the competitive environment to require the railways to do anything different and they will be the bottleneck.” See SHIPPING on page 6 »
Kharl Cabatingan came to Canada eight years ago as a temporary foreign worker, arriving in Neepawa in 2009 to work at Springhill Farms. He brought his wife Ruby Ann and daughter Annikha to live in Neepawa in 2011. PHOTO: LORRAINE STEVENSON
BY LORRAINE STEVENSON Co-operator staff/Neepawa
Publication Mail Agreement 40069240
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harl Cabatingan will have his own “settler story” to tell his grandchilden one day. He and wife Ruby Ann became Canadian citizens last year. The couple, both born in the Philippines, has lived in Neepawa not quite all of their young daughter Annikha’s life. She was born shortly after Kharl
emigrated in 2008, initially working in Ontario, as a temporary foreign worker, then transferring to Springhill Farms in the summer of 2009. His and others’ arrival to work at the pork-processing plant just east of town was part of the company’s expansion as a “farm to fork” company becoming HyLife Foods in 2011. Cabatingan was one of what would be hundreds more young men and women coming here, eager to work, start a new life and bringing family here too. Kharl
sponsored Ruby Ann and Annikha after successfully applying through the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) for permanent residency status. The couple reunited in 2011 after three long years apart — a time both joyous and stressful, they say today. “In Neepawa it was our first time to live together as a family,” says Ruby Ann. “We’d been apart for almost three years.” See FAMILIES on page 6 »
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