CHESTERVILLE — Governments have broken a long-standing bargain with farmers and abandoned them, says an agricultural lawyer, who urges all farmers to unite and take control of the legislative process or face an avalanche of government regulations stacked against them.

Government is necessary but has malfunctioned, said Ottawa lawyer Donald Good. "I would compare government to cancer. The best way to stop cancer is to cut it out. Government is not going to solve your problems."

Good grew up on a farm when the bargain between governments and farmers went like this: farmers produced cheap food in return for free services. Producing at below cost of production prices, farmers were offered free tile drainage and other programs, he said. "But half of that bargain is gone. Farmers get no services or fewer services. The other half of the bargain is still there. That’s why agriculture struggles now more than it ever has in the past 50 years."

Speaking to the Dundas Landowners Association Oct. 27, Good called on the landowner movement to form an alliance with mainstream farm organizations and praised tractor demonstrations on highways. "You have to take control of the process," he said. "Don’t count on anyone but yourselves. There’s nobody out there. If you still feel that government is your ally, that’s a big leap of faith."

In response to criticism of the landowners’ brash in-your-face strategies, he retorted: "You can’t make an omelet unless you break a few eggs."

The current anti-farming climate can be traced back through years of environmentalists influencing decisions at the policy level. Farm groups sent farmers to sit on task forces, while environmental groups sent lawyers, he said. Farmers came back from meetings to seek a lawyer’s explanation of what happened. Not surprisingly, environmentalists got what they wanted. The result is that lawyers like Good are now representing farmers in a plethora of cases from land use and tax assessment to The Drainage Act to crop insurance claims.

As for the Nutrient Management Act, "it’s the dumbest, stupidest piece of legislation anyone could have come up with," he charged. Three pieces of legislation (Environmental Protection Act, Ontario Water Resources Act and The Conservation Authorities Act) could have been tweaked to prevent nutrients from leaking into water sources. "Walkerton wasn’t about manure. What you had were two people in charge of the beer fridge when they should have been running a treatment plant. The farmer was exonerated."

Even in matters closer to farmers, beware. About five years ago, Good said he complained that the Crop Insurance Commission, the predecessor to Agricorp, had stiffed a farmer on an insurance claim. "They know a certain number of farmers will never complain" if they were denied a claim, he said.