Yesterday’s Federal Court of Appeal decision overturning Federal Justice Campbell’s ruling Agriculture Minister Ritz acted illegally by introducing legislation ending the single desk Wheat Board is a small bump in the road on the way to restoring our Wheat Board.
This was a case about process – how things were done, not what was done. Justice Campbell’s favourable ruling established that the old concept of the Divine Right of Kings, now renamed Parliamentary sovereignty, was not relevant. Unless something is constitutionally protected, the Court of Appeal seems to have re-asserted the idea that a majority government can do anything it wants, any time it wants, any way it wants, to anybody it wants. Most thinking people will conclude this is nonsense. So it looks like the learned justices have simply handed a hot potato to the Supreme Court of Canada.
However, the real action comes with the $17 billion Class Action and Constitutional Challenge which will test what Ritz’s CWB killing legislation actually did. The Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board have started this process in the court system and it is full speed ahead with “Single Desk or $17 billion.”
At about the time the whole concept of the Divine Right of Kings came to an end, there was another popular phrase: “Large bread or a king without a head.” Those who feel they can deny farmers their democratic and constitutional rights to control their own grain marketing would do well to remember they are on the wrong side of history.
Video link
