It could be a month or more before prairie farmers suing the federal government over the end of the CWB single desk find out if their case can proceed.
Federal Court of Canada judge Daniele Tremblay-Lamer reserved judgment Oct. 23 on a federal government motion that a $17 billion class action suit over the end of the CWB monopoly be dismissed.
The class action suit alleges that the federal government confiscated assets and sales opportunities that farmers had built up for years when it unilaterally ended the single desk Aug. 1, 2012.
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Approximately 1,000 farmers have supported the case and a right to share any of the settlement if it goes in their favour.
Federal government lawyers argued in an Ottawa courtroom that the lawsuit has “no reasonable prospect of succeeding at trial” and should be dismissed.
They argued that the farmer suit “is rooted in an incorrect interpretation of a former provision of the Canadian Wheat Board Act” that a farmer vote was required before the monopoly could be ended.
“This interpretation was specifically rejected by the Federal Court of Appeal,” said the federal brief.
It argued that the powers and responsibilities of the CWB were set by acts of Parliament, and as a federal agency, it was not owned by its farmer customers.
Winnipeg lawyer Anders Bruun, representing the farmers, said the judgment could take up to a month.
If the judge decides the case should go to trial, he said the hearing may not be held until late next year or early 2015.
Bruun said a key argument at the Oct. 23 hearing in defence of farmer claims for compensation was that the government and CWB deliberately under-estimated pool results for the 2011-12 crop year, the last year of the single desk, so that some of the profits could be transferred into the next year to cover “close down” costs.
