WINNIPEG – A bannock manufacturer says the Canadian Wheat Board has foiled his attempts to help the farmers who supply him with grain and help his people with a serious health problem.
Ken Dillen, a Canadian status Indian, said Canada Customs “seized illegally” his truck and about 250 bushels of barley on Aug. 17 at Lyleton, Man.
Dillen did not have an export permit for the barley, which was an unregistered variety called Devar. Because it was unregistered, he could only get an export permit for feed barley.
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He said if he exported it as feed barley and then used it to make his bannock mix for human consumption, he could have been charged with making a false declaration at the U.S. border.
Dillen said he could not say why he uses the Devar variety in his bannock mix without divulging trade secrets. He has been making the low-fat mix since 1986.
Traditionally, bannock is made with lard. But he said Indian people need to cut fat intake to lower the rate of diabetes, and a low-fat bannock mix would help them do that.
Dillen pays the 30 farmers who grow Devar for him between $5 and $5.50 per bushel, and sells the finished product for more than $100 a bushel.
“I could save their farms if I could could get an export licence.”
For the past year he contracted CSP Foods in Saskatoon to produce the mix for him, but he wasn’t making money. So, he wanted to move production to his own mill at Cook, Minn. This was his first attempt at shipping the barley from his Canadian suppliers.
“I did everything but plead on my hands and knees for a wheat board permit. And I was told that it would be against the law for them to issue me one,” Dillen said.
Licence or no licence?
“If it’s against the law for them to issue me a licence, why is it then that I am required to have one at the border? That is a contradiction in law.”
Spokespersons for the wheat board and Canada Customs would not comment on the incident directly. But Carol McKinley, a program officer with customs border services confirmed that all exports of wheat and barley need a CWB permit. Shippers must stop at the border and present the permit.
When shippers do not have a permit, they are turned away. McKinley said customs would only seize a vehicle and grain if the shipper ignored that order.
However, Dillen is confident he’ll get his truck and grain back, but he’s not going to appeal the seizure. He said he has a strategy that he cannot divulge.
“It may include holding the prime minister’s feet to the fire, because everything that happens to a farmer in Canada, the buck has to stop somewhere.”
