RED DEER, Alta. – Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is.
That seemed to be the prevailing attitude at the Alberta Barley Commission annual meeting last week when it came to the organization’s heavy spending on a lawsuit against the Canadian Wheat Board.
“As expensive as this charter challenge has been, it’s an absolute drop in the bucket compared to what the system is costing Alberta farmers on a daily basis,” said commission chair Tim Harvie in an interview during a break in the meetings.
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“We keep putting things in perspective and it eases the pain.”
The commission has spent more than half a million dollars in the past two years on a constitutional challenge of the wheat board. The suit claims farmers’ charter rights are unreasonably infringed upon by the board’s monopoly on feed barley exports and all malting barley sales.
The $609,932 the commission spent before the case even hit the courtroom is close to the 1995-96 research budget of $658,631, and the charter challenge ranks high in the organization’s focus.
Harvie’s and general manager Clifton Foster’s statements in the annual report concentrate heavily on the charter challenge.
Both Harvie and Foster stated the commission had no choice but to initiate the legal challenge.
Calgary lawyers representing the commission in the charter challenge also attended the meeting. One of them, Keith Groves, gave a rousing summary of the case and said he believes the commission has an excellent chance of winning.
The case is expected to resume in Winnipeg the week of Dec. 9. A decision is not expected until after the new year.
In response to a question, Groves said the federal government would probably move immediately to stop the wheat board monopoly from being broken if it lost the case. He said the federal government would probably ask the trial judge or the court of appeal to preserve board legislation until an appeal had been heard.
And if the commission loses?
“I don’t want to talk about the possibility,” Groves said.
A number of producers said they were heartened by Groves’ presentation and felt more confident.
During an interview, Harvie said he didn’t like the commission’s heavy focus on political activism, but breaking the board monopoly is the only way to get changes Alberta barley growers need to prosper.
“This policy (of political activism) can be a black hole,” he said.
“It can take endless resources and time, and it never goes away. You take away one problem and there’s more, but we’ve taken on this key issue because it is such an impediment.
“A lot of times when we tried to undertake projects in market development, we ran up against this barrier….”
