Manitoba Reform MP and indefatigable Canadian Wheat Board critic Jake Hoeppner was celebrating a legal victory against his nemesis last week.
The Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench ruled that Hoeppner’s wife Fran can continue her class action law suit against the board, in which she accuses it of short changing the 1993-94 feed wheat pool by millions of dollars.
The suit is in the name of the Hoeppner family farm, M-Jay Farms Enterprises Ltd. of Snow-flake, Man.
Last May, wheat board lawyers had convinced a court official to dismiss the suit as “frivolous and vexatious”.
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The Hoeppners appealed and Jan. 14, judge W.A. Wright reinstated the case, which Jake Hoeppner said in an interview could end up costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in compensation if the board loses.
An official of the wheat board said last week’s ruling will be appealed.
“If it goes ahead, we would have to gather more than 50,000 pieces of information,” said board information officer Deanna Allen. “This would take a lot of staff time. It would not come without a cost.”
Hoeppner said in an interview the cost of staff time should be the least of the board’s worries.
If the case goes to court and the board loses, the government could be ordered to compensate thousands of farmers who did not receive as much from the feed wheat pool as they should have.
“This judgment is a real winner for us,” he said from his constituency office in Morden Jan. 17.
“Unless they appeal, the lawsuit will go ahead. The court says the government is liable if it makes a mistake or if it does not make sure its crown corporations are working for the benefit of its customers or clients, in this case producers. This could cost them 14, 70, 80, even 100 million dollars.”
Buy-back prices the issue
At the core of the class action suit filed is an allegation that in the 1993-94 crop year, the Canadian Wheat Board set its buy-back prices too low when it issued export permits to companies selling feed wheat into the United States.
By charging buy-back prices much lower than prices available when the grain was re-sold in the U.S., the board was depriving the pool of revenue which later was to be distributed to farmers, according to arguments presented to the court.
The wheat board, in arguing that the case should not be allowed to proceed, has argued the board has the discretion to set buy-back prices at the level it considers appropriate, that it is responsible to Parliament rather than to individual producers, and that the Hoeppner suit is merely part of an attempt by critics of the board to harass it.
Last week, justice Wright said there are bad feelings between Hoeppner and the board, but that does not mean the complaint is without foundation.
Without judging the merits of the case, the judge said the allegations are substantive enough “to counter the suggestion the claim is either scandalous, frivolous or vexatious.”
Justice department lawyers have 30 days to file an appeal.
