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Georgian Bay Milk continues its fight for the right to export milk A convoluted two-year legal battle has pitted the Georgian Bay Milk Company and the producers who supply it against Dairy Farmers of Ontario and the provincial government. It comes to a head in a Toronto courtroom this month by DON STONEMAN This month, Georgian Bay Milk Company Ltd. faces off against the province and the milk marketing board in the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. This hearing brings to a head a two-year battle over milk exports from producers supplying that company. Whether it will bring the fight over exports to an end is questionable. Both sides have much to lose and there may yet be other avenues of appeal. In December 2002, the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization, siding with New Zealand and the United States, ruled that Canadian dairy exports were subsidized because milk was being shipped out of the country by producers who were getting a higher price for the milk they sold domestically. Shortly after, the contract export milk system was shut down and quota-holding producers either cut back production to match their domestic holdings or bought more quota from retiring farmers. A statement of fact or factum from Georgian Bay Milk Company says its producer members had shipped milk for export purposes only and weren't involved in the domestic system, therefore the Appelate Body ruling didn't apply to them. In the winter of 2003, Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) held a hearing and, along with the Farm Products Marketing Commission, ordered Georgian Bay producers to cease shipping milk. Georgian Bay appealed that decision to the Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal. On June 4 the tribunal found in favour of Georgian Bay. A week later, DFO appealed the Tribunal ruling to Ontario's then agriculture minister, Helen Johns. On July 23, the minister issued a four-paragraph decision quashing the tribunal's ruling and asked DFO to give Georgian Bay producers until Nov. 30 to get their businesses in order or to wrap them up. Now it is February, 2005, and Georgian Bay producers are still shipping milk while appeals make their way through the court system. Georgian Bay producer Chris Birch, Hillsdale in Simcoe County provided Better Farming with a factum prepared by Georgian Bay lawyers. The factum indicates that lawyers will take aim at the province and the marketing's board's decisions in a wide variety of ways -- challenging the province's right to delegate powers to "a private producer co-operative," the province's powers to enforce federal regulations about milk exports, and the legislature's right to delegate powers to the board. Georgian Bay also questions the way in which the issue was handled by the minister, alleging that she had dealt with this issue earlier, and therefore it was improper for her to overturn the tribunal's decision. "If we do win in court the right to exist, the door is wide open to everyone" who doesn't hold quota to produce milk for export, says Birch. Dairy Farmers of Ontario is still preparing its factum and won't release it publicly until it is presented in court, says Wes Lane, director of communications. DFO is taking this matter very seriously, he said. Bruce Saunders, DFO's vice-chair, says the organization would deal with any fallout from the court case when a decision is rendered. Watching from the wings is Sunderland dairy producer Bill Denby, whose company, Dairy International, has similarly been prohibited from exporting milk. He says his case may come to a judicial review in the fall. He's waiting for the results of a case between a tobacco grower and the flue board before launching his own. In that case, the flue board ordered a producer to quit growing tobacco. The Farm Products Appeal Tribunal upheld the tobacco board's decision. The grower took the appeal tribunal's decision to Judicial Review in Superior Court and the court threw out the tribunal's decision. Now that court's decision has been heard by the Ontario Court of Appeals in December and, at press time, a decision had not been brought down. BF © copyright 2005AgMedia Inc.. top back