But the real battle is for property rights and against central planning by bureaucratic bullies…

Only about 4.5% of Canada’s landmass is arable.

If the government of Ontario gets its way, that number will be getting smaller in the years and decades to come.

But not if local landowners in the Region of Waterloo have anything to say about it.

And they do.

The Province and Region have gotten themselves into the land banking business, buying up area farmland for unspecified future industrial development.

Which so far has featured the deliberate obliteration of crops.

The bureaucrats’ timing could not be worse.

Not only does harvest loom, but food inflation remains a punishing reality for millions of Canadians.

The formula is familiar to pipeline landowners, CAEPLA members in particular.

First you send out land agents with insulting lowball offers.

Then, at the first opportunity, remind landowners that if they fail to enthusiastically jump at the offer, they will be expropriated.

Compensation for this “legal” land theft after the fact will of course be less than the original lowball offer.

Sure, some landowners might manage to negotiate a slightly better deal, but many will take the money and run — sometimes out of shortsightedness, other times simply to avoid the hassle.

Before you know it, a whole district’s character has been transformed.

These sorts of schemes are basically epic subsidies for connected corporations and a gift to their cronies in government.

The focus of the local landowners’ protest has been on preventing the loss of precious cropland, with a lack of transparency being an aggravating factor.

But the bigger issue here is clear.

It’s about property rights.

The Province and Region would not be able to provide land banking services for their cronies if not for the power of expropriation.

Expropriation is the ultimate abuse of property rights.

No power to expropriate, no government land banking boondoggles.

Landowners would be at liberty to tell land grabbing governments to get lost.

CAEPLA would encourage organizers of the ongoing protests to consider demanding the following:

1. An end to expropriation, for any reason (governments will always claim their schemes are for the “greater good” – and when farmers are a minority, their interests will seldom be deemed for the greater good);
   
   
2. An end to all government subsidies for industry – even without expropriation, tax subsidies and loan guarantees and other “incentives” enable crony corporations to outbid locals for scarce resources like farmland;
   
   
3. Beyond getting governments out of the land banking business, local landowners could consider forming their own land corporation to purchase options on their neighbours’ farms.  A campaign could also be launched to get a critical mass of existing farmers to include covenants on all sales, restricting the land to agricultural use only in the future.  Both approaches neutralize government interference and bullying by mega corporations to protect farmland and farming communities for posterity.