Bill 81, the provincial Nutrient Management Act, is bad legislation that will drive many farmers out of business, says agricultural lawyer Donald Good.

The new bill is "massive overkill for an issue with a limited negative past" and may be designed to put farmers out of business, Good says. The "unintended effect" of a poorly thought out bill will turn thousands of acres into the New Muskoka.

He likens the bill to the federal gun registry boondoggle. Instead of Bill 81, "The Walkerton tragedy should have given us an Act to Regulate Idiots Operating Water Works," he said.

"I see some very expensive litigation to determine some of these issues and no guarantee that the farmer will be protected," he said. "Farm organizations shouldn’t have allowed this bill to get this far."

The number of farm cases before the courts will dramatically increase once Bill 81 becomes operational, he warns. What’s more, the penalties will ‘be a windfall of revenue from farmers for the government." Whoever designed the bill had no concept of the dynamics of a family farm, he said. There are too many rules and they’re too bureaucratic in nature.

The real liability for farmers, he says, will come under the investigative part of the act. He says that placing the act under the Ministry of Environment, where the sustainability of agriculture is not a priority will work against farmers.

When he represented farmers four years ago at Morewood, in Dundas County, key provisions of the Environmental Assessment Act were completely disregarded. "My clients owned the land above the aquifer and they were concerned about the potential impacts on their ability to farm," he said. They had good reason. "The farmers’ rights were totally disregarded in the government’s rush to get a new water source for the town." When farmers and municipalities are in conflict over ground water, the municipality will have the upper hand, he said.

In the cases Good has been involved with over 30 years, nutrients have seldom been the focus. He is not aware of one case involving fertilizer. All the cases dealt with contaminants – turbidity or ammonia. A contaminant is something that can impair water quality, he points out. .

He says the appeal body should be the Normal Farm Practices Protection Board. Instead, a farmer can appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT). That’s the wrong board, and a major flaw in the legislation. The ERT has the power to rescind or amend the notice of non-compliance. It has limited power to reduce the proposed fine. "The farmer is denied access to an independent court," he says. Innocence until proven guilty will not exist, and the Act is silent on due diligence. The one good aspect is that the offence is not under the criminal code.

Under the previous system, the board received hundreds of complaints. But only a few found their way to a board hearing.

Farmers can be fined anywhere between $5,000 per day to $25,000 per day, with a conviction under other environmental laws counting as a previous conviction. Corporations though they may be run by a single farmer can be fined at a higher rate. The people who formulated the regulations don’t seem to realize that a corporation is a legal entity. These farm aren’t General Motors.