Farmers may like to seed early and harvest early, but that eagerness to get ahead of the game apparently doesn’t extend to running in the Canadian Wheat Board director elections.
“We didn’t anticipate that virtually everyone would leave it until the last minute,” a rather puzzled and harried election co-ordinator Peter Eckersley said Oct. 30, the day nominations closed.
The nomination period opened Sept. 5. Over the next 51 days, not a single candidate filed
papers.
Finally on Oct. 26, just four days before deadline, the first nomination arrived. A few more trickled in the next day, and then on deadline day the fax machine at the co-ordinator’s Winnipeg offices started humming.
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By 4:30 p.m. that day, just five candidates had officially filed nomination papers and been accepted as candidates: Adam Campbell in District 2, Russell Larson, Glen Leggott and Ian McCreary in District 6 and Henry Penner in District 10.
Ten other nominations had been received, but Eckersley declined to release those names until their papers had been reviewed to ensure they met all the filing requirements.
However, those who have publicly stated their intention to run include James Chatenay and Ken Larsen in District 2, Ken Ritter, Rick Strankman, Tom Jackson and Earl Hawthorne in District 4, Terry Hanson and David Schnell in District 8 and Wilfred (Butch) Harder in District 10.
Candidates were required to provide a $500 deposit that will be returned if they withdraw within 14 days or if they submit all the required financial
reports following the election.
