The Rural Voice, 1988-12, Page 14AGRICULTURAL
EMPLOYMENT
SERVICES*
• Formerly Canada Farm Labour Pool
NEW NAME — SAME RELIABLE SERVICE
Provide employment planning
assistance to the agricultural
industry
Recruit workers for agricultural
employment
Assist worker orientation and
transportation
Promote good employment
standards
Provide information about
government employment
programs
OWEN SOUND WALKERTON
371-9522 881-3671
Service Seffs Cars ancf?rucks
CHRISTMAS
SHOPPING??
We are the store with more
For the "Hard to Buy For"
PARTS CENTRE &
SERVICE SPECIALS
524-7383
GrODERICH
RVMOUTH1/
CHRYSLER LTD.
'Shake hands win the Home of Ile Great Dear
Where Service Sells Cars and Trucks
414 Huron Rd. Goderich 524-7383
12 THE RURAL VOICE
THE BRUSSELS
STOCKYARDS CASE
Bruce McCall is mad as hell and
1 can't say I blame him.
Bruce and his son Ross were the
owners of the Brussels Stockyards,
Ontario's third largest stockyard,
before they sold the business a year
ago last spring. As always in these
deals, a thing called "good will" went
along with the actual property.
Good will in this case turned out to
be a critical factor. The company's
reputation, built over long years of
dealing with farmers and ranches not
just in Ontario but across Canada,
eventually became embroiled in one of
the biggest farm business scandals in
recent years.
The new owner went along oper-
ating the business pretty much in the
old manner until this fall, when cattle
purchased from Western ranchers
under the Brussels Stockyards' name
started showing up at other sales barns
across the province, with the proceeds
of the sale going to a different com-
pany. The new owner and his family
disappeared, apparently to Germany.
Some of the money went with him and
his family and the three mysterious
strangers who were somehow
involved.
Many people, including the
McCalls, got stung sharply. When the
company was put into receivership,
the receiver listed $1.3 million in
liabilities and no assets. Strangely,
while the listing of all other creditors
is spelled out to the penny, the listing
for banks is noted as "unknown."
There is no mention of perhaps hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars in bank
accounts when the business was put
into receivership.
Among the things that make Bruce
McCall fume is the way local farmers,
who make up the bulk of the unse-
cured creditors, were treated. There
had been a sale at the stockyard the
Friday before the scandal broke.
When farmers who had sold cattle
started trying to cash their cheques the
next week, the bank refused to honour
the cheques. Bruce McCall says there
was money in the yard's regular
accounts to cover those sales. But the
bank grabbed that money to cover
losses in other accounts in the name
of the departed stockyard owner,
accounts that had been used to buy
and sell cattle. In other words, the
bank covered itself by taking the
farmers' money.
But there's more. Some farmers
were lucky enough to get their
cheques cashed before the scandal
broke. One farmer got a cheque for
nearly $20,000 cashed the day of the
sale, when there was apparently no
problem with the stockyard's account
as far as the bank was concerned. A
week later to the day, the bank called
to say the money had been taken back
out of the account.
There is apparently nothing new in
this kind of action. A farm activist I
talked to said that once he had a bank
take money out of his account a month
after he'd made a cattle sale, long after
the cattle were gone and he had any
chance of recovering them. Only after
a long battle did he get the money
returned to him.
Whether the bank's actions in
making the farmers pay for their
losses in the Brussels Stockyards
collapse are legal or not only a battery
of lawyers might be able to decide.
Bruce McCall worries about the moral
aspect. The bank, he contends, got
itself into the mess by overextending
credit to the stockyard owner (at one
point increasing the line of credit
without informing McCall, who had
guaranteed the original line of credit
himself). Although the farmers will
eventually get 90 per cent of their
money back through the Ontario
(coned)