Judge rules Ritz breached Wheat Board Act | CTV News

It's really too bad he can't be sentanced to a few good lashes for this.

Did a judge just publically say that the legally appointed rulers of Canada can not change laws?

Just a question for clarity on the precident this idiot..I mean judge...just set.

No, he just said that Parliament is bound by the laws it passes and cannot suddenly change things without following the existing laws on the book.

It makes total sense, because otherwise a party could come in and change things radically and there would be nothing Canadians could do about it until the next election.

I was under the impression that was the case anyway. The only thing to prevent it is that concern about the next election.

Just amend the Wheat Board Act to remove that obligation.

Pretty sad that a little common sense almost sounds revolutionary.

Hopefully this ruling stands.

Buck you fuddy.

I'm not questioning whether the ruling is correct for this instance.

I am questioning what the fallout will be across the board.

A precident is a precident.

How will this precident affect other areas of the government?

Or was the judge at least smart enough to implicity state, in writing, that this is for this occurence only?

There will be ZERO fallout - all this ruling says is that Parliament cannot ignore an existing law and draft a new one, without amending the existing law.

Basically, it's something like this - the governing party can't simply ban abortions or institute the death penalty for murderers without amending laws already on the books. That doesn't mean that the Conservatives couldn't do so if they wished to - they just need to put in a little more effort than cramming a new law through Parliament and the Senate.

The Conservatives error was that they didn't follow the existing law - had they held a proper plebiscite (and assuming they won), they would have been able to disband the Wheat Board.

All this ruling means is that the Conservatives will have to amend the Wheat Board Act first (to eliminate the plebiscite) and then they can disband it. However, odds are this means the Wheat Board will be around for at least another year, simply due to the amount of work necessary to do that.

Besides, this is the whole point of having judges - they are a check/balance on lawmakers, just like the legislative branch is supposed to be a check/balance on the Executive branch.

There's no law on abortion, so presumably they could ram anything thru parliament they chose.

I don't get this distinction - isn't drafting a new law that same as amending or deleting the existing one? If not, can't they just do a one two punch - "this act deletes law x and replaces it with law y"?

Buck you fuddy.
Freedom is a bitch, eh ?

bootlegga,

As long as it is worded that way in the judges ruling.

If it is worded as stupidly as "requires plebicite to change" than we have a problem.

Like I stated previously, as long as the judge makes it implcitely clear what his/her meaning is, than I have no issues.

I just don't want this left open for any future legal issues. We have enough grey area in law as it is.

Why should the average Canadian care about the Wheat Board?

Without it, it looks like your taxes will be used to prop up the port of Churchhill and variouse programs for farmers that farmer money currently pays for via the board.

And, it's grain is almost all for export. So the price premium means more money overall coming into Canada for that grain.