A Prairie farmers’ group says it has filed to appeal the Federal Court ruling that shot down its challenge of changes made to the voters’ list for Canadian Wheat Board director elections.
“We do not feel that Justice (James) Russell was correct in his assessment and understanding of the problem that confronted farmers/CWB permit book holders when (federal Ag Minister Gerry Ritz) wrote a letter of instruction to the CWB which overrode the regulations respecting the CWB Act,” farmer Stewart Wells said Friday on behalf on Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board (FCWB).
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Russell on Jan. 29 dismissed the FCWB’s challenge of orders made by Ritz before the CWB director elections in 2008.
Ritz’s orders limited the number of CWB permit book holders who would automatically get a ballot only to those who delivered wheat or barley to the CWB in the 2007-08 or 2008-09 crop years.
Other growers, or those who grow other grains, thus need to apply for ballots, whereas previously all valid permit book holders received CWB election ballots.
Russell, in his ruling, said he found “no evidence before me” that any of the individuals who filed the FCWB’s application had been directly affected, or might be directly affected, by Ritz’s order.
On that basis alone, the FCWB’s application should have been dismissed, Russell wrote, but he ruled on their application’s merits anyway, “in the event it is determined I am wrong on the issue of standing.”
“Diminished”
Russell wrote that he views Ritz’s order as “an attempt to ensure that only (grain) producers get onto the voters’ list and vote for directors. This is precisely what the (CWB Act) says must occur.”
Furthermore, Russell wrote, “measures aimed at ensuring the integrity of the voters’ list do not curtail the rights of producers. If producers who do not deliver (grain to the CWB) choose not to have themselves placed on the (voters’) list, then that is their choice.”
Wells on Friday challenged Russell’s findings, saying that “as permit book holders who have had our rights diminished, we believe that we are entitled to be granted ‘standing’ to bring this issue before the courts.”
Furthermore, during the FCWB’s court hearing before Russell on Jan. 20 in Winnipeg, “the federal government argued that the CWB itself is the only entity that should have automatic standing on this issue,” said Wells, a Swift Current, Sask. farmer and past-president of the National Farmers Union.
The government, he said, “made this argument with the full knowledge that it would be possible for (Ritz) to order the CWB to discontinue the legal action.”
Were that to happen, Wells warned, with farmers refused legal standing to bring a case forward and the CWB ordered not to do so, “any future government orders to the CWB would likely be immune to challenge.”
