The border crossings with illegal grain shipments brought them notoriety, but little else, so Canadian Farmers For Justice members are trying a different tack in their fight against the Canadian Wheat Board.
Spokesperson Rod Flaman told a recent Regina meeting that the group is taking the legal route.
“It’s really a reversal of our position,” he told about 60 people at a meeting during the farm progress show. “Our objective was to get ourselves into court, but we didn’t get the wheat board into court with us. We’ve ended up being in a defensive position.”
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CFFJ made an application to Industry Canada’s competition bureau, asking that the wheat board’s “alleged restrictive trading practices” be investigated.
The heart of the issue, said Flaman, is the board’s buy-back policy. He said the buy-back is unfair because farmers have to pay the asking price at export position in Vancouver or Thunder Bay, Ont., plus freight charges to get their grain back.
“That process … is made up,” he said, and not in CWB statutes.
A board spokes-
person said producers wishing to market their own grain pay the difference between the initial payment and the U.S. market price less freight. They still participate in the pool account.
In an interview, Flaman said the competition bureau denied the CFFJ application, saying the board was acting within its statutory rights, and referred the complaint to the justice department.
“These are the same people who’ve got us all in court,” he said.
CFFJ is now raising money in the hope of spurring the competition bureau into action.
“It would be nice to see the competition tribunal do what it was set up to do,” he said, adding the farmers will, if they have to, pursue this case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
