Bernie Sambrook hopes Juliet was wrong.
After asking herself what’s in a name, Romeo’s star-crossed lover concluded that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
But Manitoba farmer Sambrook and some of his colleagues are hoping that a change of name will translate into a change of direction and fortunes for Canadian Farmers For Justice.
They have broken away to set up a new organization called the Canadian Farm Enterprise Network, saying it’s time to abandon border runs and civil disobedience and concentrate on legal challenges and lobbying to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s export monopoly.
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“We felt that in order to attract new members and to allow the message to get up front and not the tactics, we had to take a different approach, and we thought that a new name might coincide with that well,” Sambrook said from his farm at Medora, Man.
But while a news release put out by Sambrook and two other farmers says Farmer for Justice is changing its name, some other FFJ members don’t see it that way.
They say the the Farm Enterprise Network represents a splinter group of a few disgruntled members and the majority of supporters will stick with FFJ.
“We’re still in business as Farmers for Justice,” said Art Mainil, an FFJ organizer from Benson, Sask. “We’ve had a split, a difference of opinion. These things happen.”
People from both groups say there’s no animosity, that they still agree on the goal of ending the board’s status as single-desk seller of wheat and barley but disagree on how to achieve that goal.
The new group is putting most of its eggs in Dave Bryan’s basket. The Saskatchewan farmer is arguing in the Manitoba courts that grain is the property of the farmer who grows it and since property rights are under provincial jurisdiction, the federally enacted CWB Act is unconstitutional. The Farm Enterprise Network is helping pay for a Winnipeg law firm to argue Bryan’s case.
Decisive factor
That case is one of the main factors in the split within FFJ.
Dan Creighton, long-time legal advisor for the original group, thinks the Bryan case can’t be won and wants to continue to focus on the argument that farmers are not required by the Customs Act to present export permits at the border for wheat or barley.
Sambrook said the border runs and other controversial tactics served the purpose of waking up the government, farmers and the public to the issue, but continuing them could alienate potential supporters.
“We’ve been there and done that,” he said. “It worked to a degree but we don’t want to go to the well one too many times.”
