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Cover Story

Coming soon to a town hall near you: The Rural Revolution

by Judi McLeod,

September 27, 2004

Property Rights issues

  • Invasive Species: The Newest Threat to Property Rights

  • The scourge of officious little government bureaucrats all across the land has arrived. It's called the Rural Revolution. and it's not going away anytime soon.

    "This land is our land--back off Government" is the revolution's rallying cry, and revolution leaders like Lanark Landowners association President Randy Hillier mean business.

    Rising up from their ploughs, rural associations are mad and they're not going to take it anymore. Coalesced under a common slogan, these associations have only started, and already they now stretch from the Quebec border to the Bruce peninsula. The revolution is promising a corridor of resolve and determination that will soon be paved to stretch unbroken across rural Ontario.

    Gathering steam, they're getting landowner associations in the west to sign up, and the revolution's not stopping there.

    "at the end of the path," declares Hillier, "will be property rights and less intrusive and accountable democracy."

    The well-manicured hand of the Canadian government has been too long in the denim pocket of the hardworking farmer.

    This is a national battle that takes its inspiration from the need for average people to get out and defend rights to private ownership.

    Top heavy with pencil pushers, cookie counters and big city environmental/animal rights activists, the Canadian government has made agriculture the most over-regulated among Canadian industries.

    The family farm is an endangered species.

    Unlike their ivory-tower adversaries, farmers and rural people are taking the battlelines well over senate rhetoric. In rural Ontario, government agents who show up on private property are being promptly escorted off these properties.

    Thanks to the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, property rights are not enshrined in the Canadian constitution. Ownership of property is now a privilege bestowed by government.

    We urbanites may lament the loss of individual rights over an occasional Friday night beer, the Lanark Landowners association is doing something constructive. The LLa has set a final deadline of July 1, 2005 for the inclusion of Property Rights into the Canadian Constitution--or else.

    Or else, what?

    Rotating and escalating farm strikes. The strikes, which already kicked off at the municipal level, are growing to include regional, provincial and, if necessary, a national strike.

    Hillier and Company are talking about food, not hockey.

    Says Hillier, "Farmers will continue to cease to ship local produce and close major highways, restricting the movement of food within the strike areas.

    "Initially, farmers will stop shipments of food for three days in the strike area. Dairy farmers will withhold milk deliveries to dairies; local produce will be withheld from markets, supermarkets, wholesalers and food terminals; cash crop farmers will stop shipment of grains and cereal crops; livestock will be kept at pasture, not abattoirs.

    "With our affiliated truckers, farmers will set up picket lines with tractors and transports at key border and access points and major arteries to limit imported food from crossing the picket lines."

    The Rural Revolution does not fear the government, their bureaucrats or even their urban media outlets.

    When the Toronto Star portrayed the LLa as a bunch of "ultra-conservative rednecks", sawmill owner Ronald armstrong delivered a bracing salvo in the form of a letter to the editor.

    "We are people who have become fed up with over-regulation, government intrusion and special interest idealists from urban areas coming into the area and dictating how they should live their lives and manage the land they have so successfully managed for years."

    armstrong made it clear that he and his ilk would continue to "talk in opposition to the politically correct types. "

    "I've never voted for a politician in my life and asked him or her to protect me from myself--this is a job they're taking on by themselves to enforce."

    The farmers and rural people forging the revolution don't use the glib talk of urban activists when plain parlay will do. They prefer the thresher to the briefcase, and dungarees to the city slicker's pinstriped suit. They're up before the crack of dawn and working long after the sun sets.

    and they're loaded with a characteristic that sadly seems to missing on the agents of the other side: plain commonsense.

    The Rural Revolution cannot be stopped by media insult or by government intervention.

    The New Year of 2005 is just around the corner. The lowing of the cows and the bleating of the sheep will be heard in vast new pastures--the local council chambers across the land.

    Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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