Alberta says it will again apply for intervener status if the federal government is granted leave to appeal a ruling that shut down its plans for an open market in Prairie barley.
In a column distributed by the provincial agriculture department, Agriculture Minister George Groeneveld said the province “will remain in the fight until it is settled.”
The federal Conservative government announced in late August that it would file an appeal of a July 31 Federal Court ruling that rescued the single-desk barley marketing powers of the Canadian Wheat Board.
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The government had set August 1 as what it called “Barley Freedom Day,” on which its revised regulations, lifting the CWB’s monopoly marketing powers over exports of Prairie barley, were to come into force.
The court, however, concurred with a pro-CWB farmers’ group that Ottawa contravened the Canadian Wheat Board Act by not subjecting its revised regulations to a vote in Parliament.
Groeneveld said it was clear at the recent western agriculture ministers’ meeting in Regina that not all the provinces agreed on the issue of the CWB’s single desk.
He noted in his column that his province’s farmers had “voted decidedly in the majority” for what the federal government termed “marketing choice” in barley.
