MacGREGOR, Man. — Dave Sawatzky says he didn’t set out to challenge the Canadian Wheat Board’s authority when he started exporting wheat without a permit last year.
In his view, he was simply marketing wheat that the Canadian Wheat Board was unwilling to sell on his behalf.
But if certain farm organizations have become the voice of deregulation in Canada’s grain industry, this stocky farmer from MacGregor, Man. has become the movement’s official martyr.
The first person fined under the Canada Customs Act for running the Canada-U.S. border with truck loads of wheat, Sawatzky’s defiance has attracted a steady stream of reporters to his doorstep.
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As he sits discussing his situation, his wife Rose takes phone call after phone call, giving directions to their farmyard and booking appointments.
Sawatzky is appealing the more than $5,000 in fines and costs assessed against him following his Sept. 13 standoff with customs agents and the RCMP at the border.
He may face further charges under the Customs Act, the Canadian Wheat Board Act and the Canada Seeds Act, following a raid on his home by RCMP officers in September.
Sawatzky’s position is clear and he wants an opportunity to air it in the courts. He does not believe the Canadian Wheat Board Act applies to him because he does not hold a permit book, and therefore has signed no contract agreeing to the board’s export powers.
If the courts prove him wrong, he wants the law changed so individual farmers can choose whether to market through the board or on their own.
Regardless of whether his views are supported by the majority of prairie farmers, his actions last year garner sympathy among farmers in this province.
Sawatzky has admitted publicly to doing what many farmers did quietly, because of how the board and the grain trade handled last year’s outbreak of fusarium head blight.
Sawatzky was among hundreds of Manitoba farmers whose wheat crop was infested with the disease that left it contaminated with vomitoxin.
Initially, the board refused to allow wheat containing more than five percent of the so-called “tombstone kernels” into the handling system. Canadian feed mills didn’t want it either.
Because there was no initial price established for the contaminated wheat, it was technically illegal for farmers to buy it back from the board for export through legitimate channels.
Valuable in U.S. market
Yet that wheat was worth between $4 and $5 per bushel in U.S. elevators because it was the highest protein wheat produced in North America last year. Vomitoxin levels were reduced by blending.
Faced with a decision to move grain across the border, albeit illegally, or have it sit in their bins, the choice was clear for Sawatzky and an unknown number of other Manitoba farmers. “I’m not the type of person who’s going to sit back, sulk in the corner and die,” he said.
Some farmers told the board they were exporting feed wheat in order to get an export permit. Others told the board nothing at all. No one stopped them at the border to check their documentation.
Now there is a discrepancy of nearly 400,000 tonnes between the statistics of Canadian Wheat Board grains imported by the U.S. and what was recorded as exports through official channels.
It has given Sawatzky, and those who share his views, a platform from which to launch the current campaign. His actions, and the official response to them, has placed him on the crest of a wave of people who are angry.
The loose coalition, calling itself “Farmers for Fair Marketing”, represents a group of individuals who have sought public attention in the past on causes ranging from rail car allocation policy to Farm Credit Corporation attempts to collect on overdue mortgage payments.
Others want change
“There are people jumping on the bandwagon who have ulterior motives,”Sawatzky conceded in an interview. “There are a lot of people who would like to see different things happen.
“I know there are people with views more radical than mine. I also know people whose views are less radical than mine,” he said.
But he doesn’t worry that his personal agenda will be compromised. “As long as you maintain the fundamental principle, you cannot get side-tracked.”
For Sawatzky, it is not a debate over whether the Canadian Wheat Board does a good job, or whether it can continue to exist under a dual marketing system.
For him, it is a question of whether farmers should have the right to choose their venue for marketing grain. “What happens after that remains to be seen.”
