The federal government is welcoming the Federal Court decision to strike down six of seven claims in a class action lawsuit over the end of the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk.
Four prairie farmers - Andrew Dennis of Brookdale, Manitoba, Ian McCreary of Bladworth, Saskatchewan, Nathan Macklin of DeBolt, Alberta. and Harold Bell of Fort St. John, B.C. - were seeking $17 billion in damages from the federal government for ending the wheat board monopoly in 2012, alleging the government expropriated farmers' assets in the process.
"We are surprised that even though the court acknowledged farmers' money had built and operated the Wheat Board since 1935, Madam Justice Tremblay-Lamer still ruled the federal government has the power to expropriate $17 billion dollars of value without compensation," said former CWB director Stewart Wells, serving as the spokesperson for Friends of the CWB, which supported the court challenge. "It is especially disappointing when the $17 billion value was never disputed by the federal lawyers or the court. Farmers know who built and paid for Canadian Wheat Board assets."
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz welcomed the judge's ruling, rejecting Wells' statement.
"They talk about all these assets that have been stolen away from farmers. Nothing could be further from the truth," said Ritz last week. "If that was the case, Canadian taxpayers wouldn't have had to come forward with $350 million to wind down the CWB. The building, the railcars were all heavily leveraged. The ships weren't paid for - there was a deposit and that's it. This argument that somehow all of these things were of such great value is complete bunk."
The judge told the plaintiffs they can file a revised statement of claim focusing specifically on whether restructuring costs impacted pool payments to farmers in the 2011-12 crop year.
"She has allowed it to move forward on some of the management things that were done, and of course, Mr. Wells himself was part of that management, so I'm not sure how they're going to end up suing themselves in that regard," said Ritz.
Wells added the four farmers might file an appeal.
"The plaintiffs do have the option of appealing the entire ruling and sending it back with the hopes of having this ruling overturned, again making the case that the government has expropriated property from farmers without adequate compensation," he said.
