LLA militancy is sign of growing rural discontent, Megan Gillis discovers

By MEGAN GILLIS, OTTAWA SUN

IN SLIPPERS and his signature red suspenders, Randy Hillier sits in the kitchen of his 1864 farmhouse near Perth. An old dog snores at his feet.

The Lanark Landowners Association founder's words are as fiery as his ever-burning cigarette.

"If your government -- and it's mine and yours and all of ours -- can take a family, strip them of their identity, their assets, their property, what makes you think they won't do it to you?" he asked.

Today, as many LLA members as Hillier can muster will return a Belgian family in hiding from deportation to their Navan farm. The LLA says they're victims of bureaucracy.

"We're going to provide people there at all times to prevent their deportation," Hillier vowed. "We'll see if Canadian Border Services wants to have a confrontation over the Van Hauve family or break this logjam."

LATEST BATTLE

It's just the latest battle in which the LLA has been willing to break what they say are unjust laws.

They've held illegal deer hunts to protest white tail cull restrictions, surrounded a farm where the Humane Society was trying to seize animals, blockaded government offices and shut down Hwy. 401 with a tractor convoy.

Three years after "This Land is Our Land -- Back Off Government" signs sprouted in Lanark County, Hillier claims 15,000 members for the new Ontario Landowners Association.

"We wanted to convey a message that government is going too far," Hillier says of the group's now-famous slogan. "Back off government. This is indeed our property. They may cherish it, be envious of it, they may want it but it's not theirs."

The LLA has battled municipalities, wildlife and environment officials, medical officers of health, provincial cabinet ministers and now Canadian Border Services.

Hillier boasts each county with an association elected a Tory -- and will turf them too if they don't do the job.

He bristles at the suggestion the LLA is becoming increasingly confrontational.

"Look in the dictionary. See what militant means?" he said. "One of them is to stand for a cause. If they say we stand for a cause too excessively, I agree. We're not armed, we're not violent. We stand for a cause."

But just what is that cause?

The media-savvy public face of rural rage is an Ottawa-raised electrician who insists the LLA isn't a farm group.

Yet co-founder John "Spanky" Vanderspank -- since ejected in an internal battle -- tried to lead the 40,000-member Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

The LLA started a scrap with the OFA by organizing a rival rally at Queen's Park last year. And they jammed Parliament Hill with tractors to blast mad cow policy.

PROPERTY RIGHTS

"This is not a farm group, this is a landowners' association," Hillier said. "It's about government interference with our right to exchange and use our property.

What they really want is constitutionally enshrined property rights and reforms to a judicial system they say leaves ordinary people at the mercy of government, he said.

Geri Kamenz, a pig farmer and OFA vice-president, battled Hillier in the past but says they've reached a truce. Kamenz estimates a third of local OFA members are LLA members.

He chuckled when told Hillier said the LLA isn't a farm group.

"I thank him for making that distinction," Kamenz said. "There was conflict initially because it was an emerging organization trying to find its niche and bumping into a lot of people -- we were one of them. They've got their modus operandi. If that's what works for them, more power to them."

There's no truce with Vanderspank, however.

Vanderspank, a Ferguson Falls cash cropper, was kicked out of the LLA last year and now says he'll never rejoin with the "power hungry" Hillier as leader. "He wants to be the one who's in the news," Vanderspank said.

Carleton University political science professor Jonathan Malloy calls the LLA a classic populist movement.

They blend a bit of political philosophy with a deep suspicion of urban "experts" and elites and a belief that ordinary people and their common sense are being ignored.

So far, it's been tough talk and symbolic action -- like hiding the Van Hauves -- but no major confrontation, Malloy said.

He believes the LLA is "pretty marginal" and will likely fade away or be absorbed into a broader political movement like the populist movements of the past.

But they shouldn't be ignored.

"It's worrisome when so many people seem so unhappy and defiant towards the state," Malloy said. "That's not a good sign in a democracy. All is not well in rural Ontario."