Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz is continuing to defend the Harper government’s disbanding of the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly as the Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board push ahead with a $17 billion lawsuit.

In a Jan. 6 letter to the Regina Leader-Post, Ritz accused wheat board supporters of being “stuck in the past.”

His letter comes in response to an earlier Dec. 30 Leader Post letter-to-the-editor by former wheat board director and current Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board Chairman Stewart Wells. In that letter, Wells argued the federal government’s actions amounted to the “confiscation of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets paid for by farmers out of the grain pooling accounts, without any compensation for these assets.”

“While Stewart Wells continues to put forward the same, tired old argument, he owes it to farmers to put the facts on the table,” Ritz wrote.

“The overwhelming majority of farmers have embraced the opportunities marketing freedom provides,” he added.

Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board have filed a class-action lawsuit against the government. The lawsuit was launched after the Conservative government ended the Canadian Wheat Board’s 70-plus year monopoly in 2012.

In her Nov. 29 decision, Federal Court Justice Daniele Tremblay-Lamer said a condensed version of the $17 billion lawsuit should be allowed to go forward.