WINNIPEG – Grain exporters are required to provide customs officers with the appropriate licence under the Customs Act, according to a ruling made by a provincial court judge here last week.
On Nov. 14, Judge Arnold Conner questioned if the law says exporters must have a licence, during the first day of Dave Sawatzky’s trial. The farmer from Gladstone, Man., is charged with exporting wheat and barley without a Canadian Wheat Board permit.
The question caused many grain traders and some farmers to speculate the wheat board’s monopoly on exporting wheat and barley would end.
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
The question arose during preliminary statements, shortly after Sawatzky asked Conner to assist him, since he does not have a lawyer. Conner said he would intervene in the case when necessary to ensure Sawatzky gets a fair trial.
Conner then proceeded to ask crown prosecutor Clyde Bond to show how exporting grain without a Canadian Wheat Board licence is an offence under the Customs Act.
“I have not been able to find any requirement that anyone provide a customs officer a licence granted by the Canadian Wheat Board for the transportation of wheat and barley,” Conner said.
Bond was not immediately able to respond.
But according to court transcripts, last Thursday Bond provided the judge with a Customs regulation that was updated in 1988. The judge said he had been working with an out-of-date version of the law.
He said the updated version showed that exporters must give customs officers the required information, documents and licenses for the goods they are exporting.
Bond expects the trial to run for at least a month. He said he will be calling about 25 witnesses to testify in the case, including customs officers, police officers, and grain and elevator agents from Canada and the United States.
More difficult situation
Bond said Sawatzky’s refusal to hire a lawyer makes the case difficult. Customarily, in large cases, Bond said the crown and defence lawyers will agree on facts that are not at issue before the trial starts.
“In this case, Mr. Sawatzky has taken – and it’s his right – the position that the crown has to prove every fact and so therefore we have to call … almost all the witnesses,” Bond said.
Bond has more than a dozen crates of documents for the case.
Sawatzky, 34, who carries his documents back and forth to court in a briefcase, told reporters he is representing himself because he “can’t afford the type of lawyer it would take to win this one.”
