Dear editor,

I spent Wednesday, Jan. 20 sitting in Federal Court in Winnipeg as a farmer-applicant on behalf of the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board. Our case is about the voter manipulation by the Federal government in 2008 in our farmer-funded Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) Director elections.
Instead of using the majority of their time to extol the virtues of the Minister’s letter of instruction which stripped thousands of farmers of their automatic voting rights, the government used most of their time to argue that farmers like me did not have the right to challenge them in court!
This argument comes from a government that used taxpayer money to directly campaign (campaign is the term used by the RCMP when they looked into the matter) on behalf of their chosen anti-CWB candidates in the farmer elections. As well, this argument comes from the government that thinks it can override existing legislation and regulations by a simple Ministerial letter (decree).
Farmers like me and thousands of others pay all of the costs of running the elections. We also have to live with the outcome of the elections and the elections directly affect how much money we receive from our grain sales.
It is both condescending and insulting for the government to use the majority of its time arguing that we shouldn’t be able to challenge them in court. If not us, who? If not the Federal Court, where?
At the moment we have to be thankful that we still have an independent judiciary as a firewall between us and the on-going attacks from this government.
The judge has reserved his decision on the legality of the voter manipulation, but anyone wishing to support our efforts can send a cheque to The Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board, 104 Rue. St. Pierre, St. Norbert, MB, R3V 1J8.

Yours truly,
Stewart Wells,
farmer-applicant and member of the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board