WINNIPEG – It was déjà vu in a Winnipeg courtroom last week as the Federal Court of Appeal considered the future of barley marketing.
For most of the day, it was a repeat of last July’s federal court hearing on the same issue in Calgary.
At that time, judge Dolores Hansen ruled that the federal government could change the Canadian Wheat Board’s marketing mandate only by legislation, not by regulation.
The federal government appealed that decision and that appeal was heard in Winnipeg last week.
Read Also
Going beyond “Resistant” on crop seed labels
Variety resistance is getting more specific on crop disease pathogens, but that information must be conveyed in a way that actually helps producers make rotation decisions.
Over the course of five hours, the same lawyers made the same arguments about the same points of law as they had in Calgary seven months earlier.
And at the end of the day, it was the same decision, as the three-judge panel unanimously rejected the government’s appeal.
In summary, here’s what the two sides said:
- Lawyers for the wheat board, the Manitoba government and Friends of the CWB argued that justice Dolores Hansen correctly ruled in July that section 47.1 of the CWB Act clearly states that to exclude any grain from the board, the government must consult with the CWB, hold a producer vote and then introduce a bill into Parliament.
- Lawyers for the federal and Alberta governments repeated the arguments rejected by Hansen. They said that section 47 of the CWB Act enables cabinet to include grain under the board through regulation, and argued that under the Interpretation Act, if a government can do something by regulation, it can also do the opposite.
Government lawyer Stephen Vincent presented no new arguments, but asked the judges to find that the July ruling was wrong on points of law.
The judges did the opposite, saying in a brief oral decision that they could find no reason to overturn the lower court’s decision.
Manitoba government lawyer Alan Ladyka told the court that the federal government’s case failed the test of common sense.
“It makes no sense for Parliament to pass 47.1 and at the same time leave an alternate system (for excluding barley) in place,” he said.
Friends of the CWB lawyer Anders Bruun said it was clear from amendments to the CWB Act in 1998 that the intention was to give the decision-making power over the board’s future to farmers.
“It’s clear that the government of that day did not want decisions about the CWB’s future to be made by cabinet behind closed doors without a full public and Parliamentary debate,” he said.
