Ottawa can strip barley from the Canadian Wheat Board's sales monopoly without a parliamentary vote because it is only reversing a regulatory move, not changing legislation, the government's lawyer said on Thursday.
The Conservative government is trying to fend off the wheat board's Federal Court challenge to its plan to give Western Canadian barley farmers the choice to sell directly to export buyers and maltsters or through the CWB, starting August 1.
The government has the power under laws governing the board to repeal the inclusion of barley as part of the CWB's responsibility if it is not altering the single-desk regime, Steve Vincent, the lawyer representing the government, told the court on the second day of proceedings.
Barley was added without legislative change in the 1940s and there was no formal shift in rules regarding its inclusion or removal in 1998 amendments to the board governing act, Vincent said. "The whole history of barley is a regulatory matter," Vincent said.
The board and its supporters hope to stave off the exclusion on Wednesday of barley from the single-desk selling system, a move Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl has championed since the Conservatives took power last year. Federal Justice Dolores Hansen has said both sides expect her decision by Tuesday night.