WINNIPEG – Manitoba’s lone Reform MP said if the RCMP won’t start an investigation based on the evidence he has collected on the business practices of the Canadian Wheat Board, he hopes the United Nations Human Rights Commission will.
And Jake Hoeppner (Lisgar-Marquette) said he and his wife Fran may decide to “force the issue.” Fran, a farmer, will export grain to the United States without a wheat board permit unless an investigation is opened, he said.
“I can’t get an investigation going and there seems to be no accountability in our justice system that should be looking after some of the issues,” Hoeppner said.
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“(Farmers) are tied down, we can’t market our grain the way we want to. So I thought it was time we get someone else involved,” he added, referring to the United Nations.
Hoeppner said he and Fran have told Canada Customs they would give at least a week’s advance notice if they decide to follow through on the attempt to export grain.
Complains compiled
This spring, Hoeppner collected complaints on behalf of several farmers who were unhappy with how the Canadian Wheat Board handled their grain. The information deals with the way the wheat board handled frozen and fusarium-infected wheat, and how the board charges farmers who buy grain back to export on their own to the United States.
Insp. Keith Thorne of the RCMP confirmed the commercial crimes unit will not conduct an investigation into the wheat board.
“We reviewed all the material that Mr. Hoeppner supplied to us and there’s nothing in it that in our opinion is criminal,” Thorne said.
Hoeppner is also upset the RCMP has not investigated a threatening phone call he received while working in his Ottawa office late one evening.
Telephone threat
Hoeppner said a male caller told him that former wheat board commissioner Bill Smith was killed, and that unless Hoeppner left the wheat board issue alone, he might be killed too. Hoeppner told a group of farmers at a meeting this summer about the call.
The wheat board is angry that Hoeppner made the statement public. Bob Roehle said Smith died in June 1992 while on a sales mission to China. He was on a ship and lost his balance as the ship was docking. He ruptured his spleen in the fall and died shortly after.
“It was a very big tragedy for this organization and even more so for (Smith’s) family, and now to have somebody three years later suggest that somehow there were suspicious circumstances surrounding that death is very repulsive to us and to the Smith family,” Roehle said.
The CWB wrote a letter to Preston Manning, leader of the Reform party on Aug. 3, asking him to discipline Hoeppner and ensure that the MP retracts the “slanderous” statement and promises not to repeat it.
Roehle said he has spoken to Manning briefly since, but the wheat board has not received an official response.
Hoeppner said the threatening phone call and the request for retraction won’t stop him from his quest. “I got elected to clean up the system and change it. If they think they’re going to scare me out of it, they got a big surprise coming.”
