by SUSAN MANN
Canada’s beef farmers want the federal government to appoint a retired Supreme Court judge to mediate a settlement in their ongoing BSE class action lawsuit.
Ontario beef and cash crop farmer Bill Sauer, the representative plaintiff in the case, says their lawyer told them it could take 10 years for the case to work its way through the legal system. Appointing a mediator “will be the quickest way for any settlement to come in our favour,” he notes.
The farmers have asked for Mr. Justice Frank Iacobucci to be appointed as the mediator. Sauer says the appointment is a good idea. “When he (Iacobucci) looks at all the evidence and the negligence that was caused by the federal bureaucrats I believe he will mediate favorably for the cattle producers of Canada.”
Letters in support of appointing a mediator to resolve the five-year-old case were sent to 308 Members of Parliament. A petition from constituents in the riding of MP Larry Miller (Bruce, Grey, Owen Sound) was read by him in the House of Commons Wednesday.
Sauer says petitions with the same wording as the one Miller read were circulated and signed by farmers across Canada. He doesn’t know how many farmers signed them.
Miller says 26 people signed the petition he read. It was tabled in the House and “it becomes part of the record,” Miller says, noting the petition was referred to the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz couldn’t be reached for comment. A spokesman in his office says by email the minister is “currently in the air traveling to Asia working on reinvigorating international agriculture markets.”
Cameron Pallett, an Ontario lawyer on the farmers’ legal team, says Mr. Justice Iacobucci has been appointed by the federal government to review other serious matters for the country, including the situation involving Afgan detainees. “My question is: Are Afgan detainees more important to the government of Canada than 135,000 hard-working Canadian farm families?”
Quoting from a 2004 federal Agriculture Standing Committee report, it says in the petition that the immediate border closing across the industrialized world to Canadian cattle and beef products (in May, 2003) sent cattle prices spiraling downward, led to the record levels of cattle inventories, dramatically raised feed costs, drained beef farmers’ cash positions and wiped out any chance of profitability for farmers in 2003 “with little prospects for recovery in the immediate and foreseeable future.”
In their letter to Members of Parliament, the farmers say it’s difficult to exaggerate the damage suffered by the Canadian cattle industry since May, 2003.
For its part, the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association is staying out of the lawsuit. LeaAnne Hodgins, communications manager, says as part of its mandate the association lobbies the federal government for funding to help beef producers and it can’t then turn around and sue the government.
Producers have been free to make an individual decision to either join the lawsuit or not, she says.
Launched in April 2005, the farmers allege in their lawsuit that negligence by federal government officials and Ridley Inc. caused the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis in Canada and the corresponding loss of income to Canadian cattle producers. The lawsuit against Ridley Inc. alleged the company manufactured infected feed that was fed to a cow diagnosed with BSE in May, 2003. Damages claimed are in the billions of dollars.
The action against Ridley was settled in February, 2008 after an agreement was reached between the farmers and the company. Ridley’s potential liability was capped at $6 million. The money was paid into a trust fund to provide financial support for ongoing actions against the federal government. As part of the settlement, Ridley denies liability and wrong doing on its part.
The allegations against the federal government haven’t been proven in court. BF
Comments
"the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association is staying out of the lawsuit. LeaAnne Hodgins, communications manager, says as part of its mandate the association lobbies the federal government for funding to help beef producers and it can’t then turn around and sue the government"
This is a perfect example of what is wrong with our farm organizations that represent farmers, farm organizations continue a lobby effort with no bsckup plan with no teeth to get results thereby continueing the usary of farmers with little chance of getting resonable economic results.The men of this lawsuit are examples of farmers discust of our organizations.
Ontario Cattlemen’s Association is staying out of the lawsuit but still continue to take a checkoff. This was a western animal but Ontario was innocently affected by lost trade. How are they OAC effective as either a lobbyist or representation? I understand the difference between lobbying and injustice. Too bad OAC does not understand the difference between basic right and wrong for the people they represent.
As for Ritz being up in the air! As an ag minister has he ever been anything more real than continually high? Farm debit has doubled and average age has increased. He might be the minister of agriculture but he has been anything but the minister for agriculture. He should be ashamed of his agricultural background or back side as an effective agricultural minister.
It's time we realized that both the US border closure because of BSE, and Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) either wouldn't have happened in the first place, or would have been substantially-less punitive, if, the day the BSE crisis started in 2003, we had simply eliminated our own protectionist stance about supply management.
The issue isn't about food safety, it's about trade, and more particularly, Canada's obstinately-protectionist stance about dairy and poultry products. We get harassed about beef because we harass other countries, particularly the US, about dairy and poultry.
Furthermore, instead of asking whether Afghan detainees are more important than beef farmers, the far-more relevant question is to ask whether Canada's supply managed farmers are more important than Canada's beef farmers, and the answer is a resounding YES.
The representive plaintiff Bill Sauers is ignoring one of the few actual known facts about BSE . Despite eating several hundred thousand allegedly “infected” cattle going back perhaps, twenty years or more before the British BSE outbreak was recognized , there has not been a epidemic of CJD amongst the British people. In short the damage to farming and allied industries appears to have been caused by hysterical headlines in the press, not by outbreaks of BSE or CJD caused by government inaction. I thought then, that BSE was induced in cattle by extreme and sudden Vitamin E deficiency , the ruminant equivalent to Chick Encephalopathy common name Crazy Chick Disease. Twenty years on, BSE has still, I understand, not been cultured in the lab therefore has not proven to be a living organism.
Regardless of the technical merits of your arguments, BSE-related border closings had almost everything to do with punishing us for our obstinacy about keeping 200% tariffs on dairy and poultry products, and almost nothing to do with the health risk of BSE.
The Canadian livestock industry knows this all-too well, as do Canadian politicians, but nobody was prepared, and isn't prepared yet, to deal with the real problem which is that other countries will, and can, use left-handed measures to get back at us for being so obstinate about restricting trade in dairy and poultry products.
This BSE is only one example of many over the years how farmers take it on the economic chin. The paid salaried CEOs and staff of our farm organizations that lobby who ever , will never never do anything of forceful result BECAUSE IT WOULD jeperdize any chance of future agi-business employment.
Canadaian farmers have a hell of unsolvable problem for non supply management farmers, and most farmers dont even care or acknowledge the causes with a remedy!
Yesterday on Canada AM the increase of consumer beef prices next year made the business headline warning the public , the reason being CBOT corn futures is at 2 year high
It is not encouraging to see this matter turn into a schism between farmers. That is not what this is about.
Neither should it be surprising that elected organizations do not want to handle this sticky wicket. They know that government does not like to face hard realities. Thus it becomes the lot of unpaid "lobbyists" to do the work.
The hard reality is that it was bureaucratic inaction and then subsequent bungling that caused this nightmarish situation for beef farmers. If the official science of the day was indeed believed to be true, then the CFIA should have placed an immediate and complete ban on the use of meat and bone meal, immediately following the example of other countries.
Instead, they are on record as saying "We don't have a problem" (CBC, Quirks and Quarks) up until mere months before the infected cow showed up in Alberta.
This issue is about a severely crippled industry seeking redress for the damage caused by the delinquency of the Federal agency responsible for food and feed safety.
This issue is about holding the CFIA to the same level of responsibility as to which they hold us as farmers and ranchers if one of us breaks the rules they so prolifically create.
However, this time it is they who broke the "rules". And somehow, we are to trust them in light of this record?
And we cattle producers paid the penalty for their negligence?
Does it not strike you that there is something wrong with this scenario?
Call your MP and tell her/him that you want to see a mediator appointed. ASAP. Call them again tomorrow. And the next day.
-John Schwartzentruber, Brussels, On.
The issue was always about the different treatment given to supply managed farmers than non-supply managed farmers. To claim it isn't about a schism between farmers, is entirely incorrect, and misleading.
Beef farmers can pretend all they want - if supply management didn't exist in May of 2003, the beef industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it has been in since that time.
Wake up and smell the coffee, people - supply mananagement is the curse of beef farmers, not the federal government.
You must be able to supply some basis for your words since you are so sure! And BTW, I am a beef farmer only.
JS
Go to your local library, and read any book on international trade. If they don't have one, get them to get one, or even several, on loan from another library. If that doesn't work, go to the library of any University.
It's all there for anyone to read.
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