Remembrance Day this past month, was again a time to give thanks and a time to reflect on what it means to “serve our country”, to “fight for our country” and to “die for our country”. Those soldiers who witnessed what happens to people when tyranny rules fought long and hard so that the children of the future would live in a free country.
We are very fortunate now living in Canada, that most of us are not fighting a war. Our soldiers travel the world to protect our freedoms and fight against dictators and tyrants who would be happy to see us dead. Because of this, our day-to-day lives are mostly pretty predictable, safe and free from the horrors of war.
The Landowners attended a meeting some time ago, where a city councilor, near the end of the evening, addressed the crowd of restless, angry citizens, each with a story to tell of government abuse. His words haunt me. He said that about 85% of all the bylaws that his council passes are against the law and if challenged in court, would be thrown out. We were all dumbfounded and asked among ourselves, how does this happen? Well it happens because no one stops it. In Ottawa, you can be fined for having a freezer on your porch. Excuse me! It’s my freezer and my porch. How dare any council pass a bylaw that makes that illegal? What next? If council can on any whim, pass a bylaw that is unconstitutional and illegal, what are the citizens to do? No one can know all the laws. There were 500,000 plus bylaws and regulations in Ontario, at last count. It’s a lot of hassle and money to challenge every law that just seems wrong, so the fines are paid, and the anger simmers.
The real question I have for people in a position of power, a position to improve things and make aggressive bullying enforcers, enforcing ILLEGAL BYLAWS, a thing of the past, is why aren’t you fixing it? Why are you ignoring real problems, hiding behind fancy dinner invitations, opportunities to cut a ribbon and shake some important hands? When hard working people are suffering under the weight of fines, courts, harassment, threatening letters, and hassle because they have broken an unconstitutional, illegal bylaw, we know that we have a problem.
It has been since 2003 that the Landowners have been sharing stories of abuse, writing letters to politicians, to the newspapers and speaking on television about the bullies on the payroll, the agencies without oversight harming their citizens…but what do we get? Form letters, platitudes, smiles, meetings, and bad media, while the harassment continues. Even though we own our land, pay the taxes on it, plow our fields and harvest our grain, there is this growing sentiment that “our land is also someone else’s land” and they, who preach from cement towers, will tell you what you can and can’t do on it. It’s time to say …“Give me your card, now get off my land…and I’ll see you in court”.
An old Italian friend of ours said to us recently, “you’re going just the way of Italy, you’ll have no farms left”. Slowly, methodically, our government is whittling away at our freedoms, telling us what we can and can’t do on our property, stealing our land acre by acre in the name of whatever the whim of the day is. The only thing missing is the tanks.