Judge Dismisses Last Canadian Wheat Board Class Action

A Manitoba judge has dismissed a class action seeking damages for grain farmers who sold through the Canadian Wheat Board's pool accounts in its last two years as a monopoly.

Justice Martin's decision describes the claim as the last of the litigation triggered by the end of the Wheat Board's single desk more than a decade ago.

The claim centred on the board's capped contingency fund, where non-pool gains were held and from which profits were supposed to default to farmers' pool accounts once the cap was reached.

Source: CBC News, Oct. 22, 2026

A Manitoba judge has dismissed the class action seeking damages for grain farmers who sold through the Canadian Wheat Board's pool accounts in the board's last two years as a monopoly.

Justice Martin wrote that the end of the single desk "spurred a host of litigation," and that this claim is the last of it. An expert told CBC this closes the book on the whole saga.

The suit, led by Brookdale, Man., farmer Andrew Dennis, alleged that roughly $145 million that should have landed in farmers' final payments for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 crop years got parked in the board's contingency fund instead, plus $5.9 million in transition costs charged to the pools. (Background from earlier coverage of the claim, not from yesterday's ruling.)

The plumbing, per CBC: the contingency fund existed to cover losses on non-pool sales, it had a cap, and once the cap was hit, non-pool profits were supposed to flow back to the pool accounts. Farmers argued the money took a scenic detour on its way to the privatized board. The court has now tossed the claim.

Full disclosure: CBC's site bounced our fetch, so we haven't read the judge's detailed reasoning, and we're not about to invent it. Hit the link for the decision details.

If you delivered wheat or barley to the board in 2010-11 or 2011-12, this suit is not sending you a cheque. We haven't heard yet whether the plaintiffs will appeal.

For everyone else, it's a rare thing in Canadian ag policy: an actual ending. Fourteen years, several courts, one Supreme Court shrug back in 2015, and the paperwork finally goes in the bin. The good kind of bin.

What it won't end: the coffee-row debate over whether the single desk was a lifeline or a straitjacket. No court in the land has jurisdiction over that table at Tim's.

Andrew James, who farms in the RM of Springfield, is pulling more than 60 bushels an acre of soybeans, roughly a third more than he budgeted for.

His call to plant less wheat and more soybeans paid off, courtesy of late-August rain he expects will help his sunflowers and corn too. Oats placed second on profitability, a distant second.

Manitoba's Wednesday crop report has the soybean harvest 95% done in the central and eastern regions and 60% in the southwest.

Richard Madan, Manitoba's senior representative to the U.S., told Winnipeg business leaders Thursday that his office helped convince Ottawa to keep farm products off its retaliatory tariff list after the latest round of U.S. tariffs landed this summer.

He says he met with Janice Charette, Canada's chief trade negotiator to the U.S., who confirmed ag was on the table. The province then rallied farm groups to make the case that tariffing agriculture was a bad idea. In the end, ag was largely spared.

He also tipped his hat to Alberta's trade office. Generous, given that in politics a win usually has more parents than a 4-H calf.

Manitoba opened its Washington office in 2025. Madan's pitch to U.S. lawmakers is the "three As": arctic, agriculture and aerospace.

A grain dryer and a truck caught fire at Walker Farms, a fourth-generation cattle and grain operation in the RM of Great Bend near Borden, Sask.

By the time the Borden Fire Department rolled in, staff and neighbours had it mostly knocked down with fire extinguishers and water. Fire Chief Ian Wainwright says crews put out the truck, cooled things off, and that was about it.

Damage: about $40,000, covering a small diesel grain dryer and the truck. The family's wooden grain elevator, the only one left in the community, took just minor damage.