(Regina, March 18, 2013) The Canadian Wheat Board Alliance (CWBA) has called on Library and Archives Canada to use its legal authority to catalogue and archive the library holdings, documents, and other artifacts of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) contained in its downtown Winnipeg office building and its offices in Tokyo, Japan, Beijing, China, Vancouver, and Regina.
Bill Gehl, a Regina area wheat and durum producer and chairperson of the CWBA said “we have reports that in spite of a preliminary assessment by Library and Archives Canada substantial portions of the CWB’s library and archives have already been picked over or put in the trash including very valuable market analysis information, and we fear that documents, customer gifts, and other antiquities relevant to the Friends of the CWB class action law suit are being lost.” Gehl went on to say “this is completely unacceptable and we have asked Library and Archives to redouble their work to document and preserve the remaining documentary heritage of our Wheat Board for Canadians.”
Referring to ongoing legal action Gehl said “we fully support the recently filed Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board class action law suit to recover the value of our Wheat Board which was seized and nationalized without compensation by the Harper Conservatives.”
Gehl concluded “the Library and Archives of Canada Act gives Library and Archives Canada both the legal responsibility and authority to immediately take possession of the documents and other archival material of our farmer owned Wheat Board and we expect them to make a priority of doing so in spite of the fact their budget has been substantially reduced by the Harper Conservatives as a part of their project to cripple the Canadian state.”
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