Farmers who launched a class action suit against Ottawa and CWB are taking their claims to Canada’s highest court.
In a Nov. 4 news release, Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board says class action litigants will seek leave to have the validity of their claim heard at the Supreme Court of Canada.
FCWB says previous court rulings that permit the class action suit to proceed with only a partial claim do not “properly address the fundamental injustice of Ottawa seizing and disposing of other valuable CWB assets paid for by farmers.”
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“Most farmers understand their CWB assets have been stolen from them by Ottawa,” said FCWB spokesperson and former CWB director Stewart Wells.
“I’m glad the plaintiffs have elected to give the Supreme Court an opportunity to address the glaring inconsistency in lower court rulings that farmers have a right to pool account monies yet do not have a right to the property bought and paid for with those pool account monies.”
Farmers involved in the class action suit are attempting to sue Ottawa for $17 billion over the dismantling of the single desk CWB.
The suit was launched in 2012 by four prairie grain growers and is supported by FCWB.
The class action claims that Ottawa’s decision to end CWB’s single desk marketing monopoly will cost prairie producers $17 billion in lost revenue and confiscated CWB assets.
That claim was partly based on the value of CWB property, including ships, hopper cars and a Winnipeg office building, which were transferred from the farmer-directed wheat board to the new post-monopoly CWB as of Aug. 1, 2012.
Also included in the claim were hundred of millions of dollars worth of pool revenues which, according to plaintiffs, should have been paid to farmers but were instead retained by the CWB to bolster an internal contingency fund and cover costs such as employee severance packages, pension liabilities and other transition-related expenses.
In a court judgment last December, federal judge Daniele Tremblay-Lamer rejected most of the farmer claims relating to confiscated property, suggesting federal legislation that ended CWB’s single desk “(did) not divest the plaintiffs of property nor (did) it divest the CWB of its property since the CWB is continued and it continues to own the contingency fund along with its other assets.”
However, Tremblay Lamar also ruled that a reduced class action suit should be allowed to proceed, saying the government and CWB may have deprived prairie farmers of some pool payouts during the 2011-12 crop year and may not have established “a reasonable price for grain remaining unsold after the 2011-12 pool period.”
Plaintiffs recently appealed that ruling at the Federal Court of Appeal.
Class action participants who launched the appeal had hoped that Tremblay-Lamer’s decision would be overturned and that a suit for all farmer claims would be allowed to proceed.
However, the appeal was rejected last month.
The decision to seek a hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada represents the last appeal opportunity for the class action.
If their attempts to have the case heard at the highest court fail, litigants are expected to proceed with a limited class action valued in the “low hundreds of millions” rather than $17 billion.
