Expropriation of heritage farm reflects troubling trend

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Below: Meyers barn that's scheduled for demolition

by JOE CALLAHAN

Amid allegations of federal government bureaucratic bullying, municipal political corruption and a call for a public inquiry, an 85-year-old eastern Ontario farmer is fighting to keep control over a farming heritage that dates back over 200 years.

The expropriation of Frank Meyers’ Class 1 farmland in Hastings County reflects one of the most recent troubling trends in the loss of agricultural land in the province of Ontario.

“Ontario is losing land at an unsustainable rate,” says Peter Jeffery, an Ontario Federation of Agriculture research analyst. “Between 2006 and 2011, Ontario lost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 600,000 acres. And the rate of loss for that period was higher than the previous five year period.”

photo: In 1798, the property in question was given to Captain John Meyers “his heirs and assigns, forever." Frank and John Meyers

Meyers is keeping a daily vigil on the roughly 225 acres of prime agricultural land that used to belong to him, his wife Marjorie and son John. Meyers is determined to maintain possession of the property immediately north of the Trenton Ontario air force base in eastern Ontario and prevent the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) from using it – despite the government having legally expropriated the property in May 2012. DND has proposed to expand its base to provide space for its Canadian Special Operations Forces Command facility that includes the Joint Task Force (JTF2) training facility. The farm is currently equally divided between soybean and corn production.

After roughly seven years of negotiations, the expropriation of the Meyers farm by the federal government was concluded in May 2012.  Land registry documents confirm that the property, formerly Meyers’ farm, now belongs to the Crown. But to Frank Meyers, the name now on the documents is irrelevant.

“They do not listen to me, they will not listen to me and they never have listened to me,” says Meyers. “I said, ‘Find me an (equivalent) piece of land within two miles,’ but nobody would sell.”

Meyers claims he was “under stress” at the time he signed an agreement, the contents of which have been kept in confidence but overseen by his Toronto lawyer Paul Scargall. Scargall says that the Meyers expropriation “has concluded.” He declined to offer any opinion about whether the family has any legal recourse.

Meyers says that he was under stress because his wife, and co-owner of the farm with their son John, was in the hospital and not present when he signed the agreement. He is refusing to accept $1.6 million as compensation for the land.

“They’ve dropped off checks here, but I fired them back,” he said. “I have no money, no checks, no nothing at the present time.”

John Meyers worked with his dad for years in their dairy operation but they sold their quota in 2007 because of the pending expropriation. Now, he has developed his own custom cabinet business and works at a Belleville manufacturing facility, while supporting his parents in the resistance to the expropriation.

And so the Meyers continue to occupy the property on a daily basis determined to prevent the CFB Trenton expansion.  And they are not alone.

photo: Meyers supporters

A group of self-described supporters, some of whom are at the site every day, are helping Meyers keep watch over the property. They have created a Facebook page called “Save Frank & Marjorie Meyers Farm.”

“Frank was sleeping in his truck keeping watch on his property,” said Melissa Sherman, one of those helping Myers resist the expropriation. “We wanted to give him a break.”

Demolition was slated to begin in January but Meyers, with the help of the supporters, served the contractor, Belleville-based Parkside Landscaping & Contracting Design, Construction and Maintenance, with what Sherman describes as “cease and desist” documents when its crew arrived on the property. The contractor’s crew left immediately and has not returned, according to Meyers. Nor has there been any further contact from DND with the Meyers family.

On their Facebook page and in a printed document they are circulating, the Meyers’ supporters’ are calling for a public inquiry. They have also made allegations of corruption against John Williams, mayor of nearby Quinte West. To date, none of the allegations have developed into a legal statement of claim.

Williams and his long-established family business own hotels in the greater Quinte region near CFB Trenton, the largest Royal Canadian Air Force Base in the country. He declined to comment on the allegations.

Questions have also been raised by Meyers’ supporters about why nearby Mountainview airport, in neighbouring Prince Edward County, a DND facility about 25 kilometres from the Trenton base, was not selected for the JTF2 expansion. In its March meeting Prince Edward County council turned down Williams’ request of a letter of support for the expropriation.

In a March 10 email, DND spokesperson Kathleen Guillot noted that “co-location with the existing Wing and its facilities and infrastructure” is what made the area directly north of the current facility “the best choice” for the CFB expansion. 

“8 Wing Trenton is the hub for Canada’s strategic airlift capability and will facilitate the deployment of Canadian Armed Forces Special Forces. The prime location along Highway 401 allows for rapid access and therefore rapid response to emergencies in major Canadian population centres, like Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa.”

The Mountainview site, she wrote, was too small and irregular in shape and includes a swamp area; was too far removed from the Trenton airfield; had limited accessibility, no municipal services and contained only a gravel airfield. “Gravel airfields are less desirable as regularly-used landing strips as they add to the wear and tear on aircraft, increasing maintenance requirements,” she stated.

Longtime Ontario property rights advocate, founder of the Ontario Landowners’ Association and current MPP for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, Randy Hillier says that he thinks every reasonable means of achieving an equitable agreement with the Meyers family has been undertaken.

“If all our provincial and federal regulations were held in the same regard as our expropriation laws, I would never have had much of an argument with government regulations,” says Hillier. “What is fair and reasonable has been codified in law and the Crown has to demonstrate that it has a need that can’t be satisfied by any other practical means. From what I understand, that threshold has been met.”

photo: Frank Meyers

Bette Jean Crews, on the other hand disagrees. Crews is a friend of the Meyers family and former president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (she was president when the federal government initiated its efforts to acquire the Meyers farm).

“They did not prove that they need this piece of property,” says Crews.

She said that the OFA offered Meyers support at a local and provincial level and added her personal reflection of a conversation she had with her husband about the Meyers situation. When a family farm has been four or five generations in the making, the current generation is loathe to lose it, said Crews.

“I’ve seen him (Meyers) pretty low and pretty desperate.”

The Meyers family and their supporters are currently keeping a 24-hour watch on the property in an effort to prevent DND-hired wrecking crews from destroying the farm buildings. BF