Farmers who launched a $17 billion class action lawsuit against Ottawa and CWB are attempting to take their case to Canada’s highest court.
Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board said in a Nov. 4 news release that farmers who launched the suit will seek to have the validity of their claims heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.
FCWB said previous court rulings that allow the class action plaintiffs to proceed with only a partial claim valued in the low hundreds of millions of dollars 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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Class action participants want the Supreme Court to rule on whether a larger claim should be deemed admissible.
“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,” said Stewart Wells.
The application to the Supreme Court must be filed by mid-December. A panel of Supreme Court judges will then review the application and decide whether to hear the case.
Wells said the ownership of hard CWB assets, including ships, hopper cars, computer systems and a Winnipeg office building, is a central issue.
“Specifically, in reaction to the hard assets of the board … those assets were purchased from money that came straight out of (CWB) pooling accounts, money that came in from the sale of farmers’ grain,” said Wells, a former member of CWB’s farmer-elected board of directors.
“Judges have agreed that the money in those pooling accounts was and is farmers’ money … but so far, the judges haven’t agreed that assets purchased with that money actually belong to farmers as well.”
The claimants are also attempting to sue Ottawa and the CWB for lost revenue that would have been returned to farmers had the single-desk marketing system been retained.
Claimants should know by early next year whether the Supreme Court has agreed to hear their case.
From Ottawa’s perspective, the claimants’ decision to seek a Supreme Court hearing couldn’t come at a more inopportune time.
Current CWB executives are attempting to privatize the former wheat board and are considering expressions of interest from a number of potential corporate partners.
CWB has until July 31, 2016, to submit a privatization plan to Ottawa, but political observers say the Conservative government would like to have a CWB privatization plan approved before the next federal election, which is due to take place within the next 11 months or so.
Wells said it remains to be seen whether the ongoing legal dispute over ownership of CWB assets will affect efforts to privatize the former wheat board.
Ottawa could have avoided legal disputes had it consulted with farmers and offered adequate compensation for CWB assets before dismantling the single desk, he added.
“It’s impossible for us to know what effect (the class action suit) may have on (CWB) efforts to find a potential buyer or a potential successful applicant,” Wells said.
“There’s no way for us to know if it will have any impact whatsoever, but if it does … the reasons would lie with the federal government … and how they’ve handled this. Any confusion or upset that’s caused now is the direct result of irresponsible actions by an irresponsible government.”
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz was not immediately available for comment.
The class action was launched in 2012 by four prairie grain growers and is supported by the FCWB.
It claims that Ottawa’s decision to end CWB’s single desk marketing monopoly will cost prairie producers $17 billion in lost revenue and wrongfully confiscated CWB assets.
The claim was partly based on the value of CWB property, which had a net book value of $70 million as of July 31, 2012.
Also included in the claim was more than $100 million worth of pool revenues. The plaintiffs said they should have been paid to farmers but were instead retained by CWB to bolster an internal contingency fund.
In a court judgment last December, federal judge Daniele Tremblay-Lamer rejected many of the farmers’ 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 appealed Tremblay Lamar’s ruling, but it was rejected.
