Feature Article August 12, 2004
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Lanark Landowners: a growing concernby Jeff Green
In just over one year, the Lanark Landowners Association (LLA) has gone from being a group of four people to becoming a group which claims 1,000 families as members, mostly from Lanark and Renfew Counties, but increasingly from throughout rural eastern Ontario and beyond. The LLA has waged effective political campaigns around a variety of issues and has been instrumental in changing the deer hunting regulations in Ontario.
They have flouted the law on several occasions to bring their message to the public, including staging an illegal deer cull and stopping traffic on Highway 417 with a convoy of 100 tractors headed for Parliament Hill, and have become a strong voice of rural opposition to federal and provincial government policies affecting rural Ontarians.
Randy Hillier is the founding President and principal spokesperson for the group. He is an electrician who recently moved from Carleton Place to a property near Perth. He told the News, I was employed in the federal public service for 8 years. I have some knowledge of how the public service operates. I wouldnt say work in the case of the public service, but it does operate.
Hillier believes the federal and provincial governments are indifferent to the needs of rural Ontarians. He cites a variety of government initiatives that have harmed the farming community: changes in the property tax classification for maple syrup producers; regulations affecting sawmill operators; the nutrient management and the water regulations, and others.
But it is the property rights issue that is fundamental to the LLA. The very first line of the Founding declaration of the Lanark Landowners says;
The L.L.A. is an association of concerned Lanark county citizens, dedicated to defending and fighting for the rights and interests of private landowners and their property.
Hillier describes how the Lanark Landowners developed out of a concern for landowners rights.
Out of MP Scott Reids advisory committee, a number of people got together and began looking at the nutrient management act, environmental assessments, land use designations; the list is just about endless. All of these things are things that we intuitively understand as ownership issues. Only you should be able to invite people onto your land.
This focus on property issues is consistent with the position Scott Reid has taken on property rights for a while. Although not himself a member of the LLA, Reid has spoken at LLA meetings. He said in a telephone interview from his office in Ottawa, The input I always have had to the Lanark Landowners is that I believe property rights should be entrenched in the charter of rights, so when the government changes regulations and infringes on someones enjoyment of their property compensation will have to be paid.
Reid recognises that entrenching property rights in the constitution is something that cannot happen for a long time, given how difficult it is to change the Canadian constitution.
He has an alternative plan, which he is committed to bringing forward as a private members bill during this next term in office.
A bill of rights, brought in under the Deifenbaker government, is still in place. I will bring forward a proposal to amend the bill of rights to include something about compensation for anyone who has property rights abrogated.
This would mean that, for example, if through the federal endangered species act, the government demanded that a farmer not carry on his or her normal practices in order to protect an endangered species, the government would then be required to pay full compensation for the loss they would be causing to the farmer.
The LLAs focus on property rights has led the Citizens Mining Action Group, a Lanark-based group seeking changes to the Ontario Mining Act, which divides property rights into surface and subsurface, to agree to work together with the LLA on issues of common concern.
The LLA has a certain in-your-face style, exemplified in their Back off government slogan, and in some of their statements. The second sentence in their Founding declaration reads:
Using taxpayers dollars, our governments support and promote Quebec, Native, Arts, Homosexual, Urban and Multi cultures. However when it comes to the independent, peaceful rural culture in Canada, government support is stifling, suffocating and controlling.
Randy Hillier said this statement was not meant to put down any of these groups, but to point out that their rights are protected but rural landowners rights are not protected. Ill give you an example: natives are allowed to shoot whatever they want to shoot, but farmers arent. And I think it is pretty clear they have decided to promote the French culture.
Another aspect of the Lanark Landowners is their wariness of the work of conservation authorities. On one hand, LLA literature quotes a groundwater study by the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority that showed that of the 400 potential or existing threats to groundwater, not one farm operation was identified as a potential problem.
On the other hand, Randy Hillier talked this week about an upcoming LLA meeting in Richmond which will talk about the latest watershed study, the Rideau River Watershed study. Weve seen the consequences of these studies, stopping people from digging a ditch or building a fence. I dont think so.
The Lanark Landowners will begin publishing a monthly newspaper next month.
