A class action lawsuit of farmers versus the government of Canada and G3 Canada Ltd. will continue now that a Manitoba judge has certified the legal action.
The suit is based upon wheat in the Canadian Wheat Board’s pool accounts in 2010-11 and 2011-12 and claims that $145 million were improperly moved when the CWB was privatized and its assets purchased by G3.
The suit also claims farmers weren’t paid all the money their contracts entitled them to.
In a news release, Manitoba farmer Andrew Dennis, the named plaintiff in the suit, celebrated the certification.
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“We will, at long last, have an opportunity to ask the court to rule on whether the government of Canada or Minister (Gerry) Ritz unlawfully manipulated CWB accounts, depriving farmers of money rightfully owing to them,” Dennis said.
Wrangling over the CWB’s assets has continued since the controversial privatization, which was hotly opposed by supporters of single-desk marketing. While arguments, debates and politics swirled around the wheat board for decades, its end came relatively swiftly after the federal Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper won a majority in 2011. Many farmers were opposed to the privatization, while others celebrated the end of mandatory single-desk marketing.
The lawsuit’s certification almost a decade later was celebrated by Stewart Wells, chair of the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, an organization that fought CWB privatization.
“We have maintained for over a decade that the government of Canada and CWB took money that belonged to farmers and sold it as part of the asset base taken over by the crown and then provided to G3 Canada Ltd., the nominal legal successor to the CWB, and owned by the multinational Bunge and the Government of Saudi Arabia,” Wells said in a news release.
