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A legal battle more than a decade old claiming that the process to privatize the Canadian Wheat Board absconded with about $145 million that rightly should have gone to farmers, has crossed another legal hurdle allowing it to continue.
This week the Manitoba Court of Queens Bench, certified a class-action lawsuit brought by Manitoba farmer Andrew Dennis against the Government of Canada and G3 Canada Ltd., the successor to the CWB.
The action alleges former Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz unlawfully sheltered $145 million of farmers money into an account that could be transferred to G3 Canada in the transaction that effectively privatized the CWB in 2012.
According to a release from the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, a coalition of farmers and others who believe farmers were ill-treated in the privatization, the Manitoba Court of Appeal accepted in a 2020 ruling that if this money had not been sheltered by the government, it would have been paid to farmers.
Stewart Wells, chair of the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, said, 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.
Martin Cash
Reporter
Martin Cash has been writing a column and business news at the Free Press since 1989. Over those years he’s written through a number of business cycles and the rise and fall (and rise) in fortunes of many local businesses.
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