Tribunal vice-chair dumps on Manitoulin chicken maverick's 'manifesto'
Friday, December 26, 2014
by BETTER FARMING STAFF
Chicken Farmers of Ontario got an early gift and Glenn Black got a lump of coal as the Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs Tribunal's vice-chairman singlehandedly rejected the Manitoulin bed and breakfast owner's request for reconsideration of an earlier appeal.
In his Dec. 23 ruling, Glenn Walker, Ridgetown, vice-chairman of the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal noted that a request for a reconsideration of a Tribunal’s previous decision can be rejected because the request is frivolous, or vexatious or made in bad faith. Walker wrote Black’s request for reconsideration can be rejected on any one of those reasons.
Walker noted the Tribunal has made two decisions on Black’s appeals at regulations pertaining to chicken production in Ontario already. On May 21, “the Tribunal carefully explained to Mr. Black that it did not have jurisdiction to deal with most of the (12) remedies requested by Mr. Black and instructed him that, if he wished to proceed before the Tribunal, he would need to file an amended Notice of Appeal.” The ruling instructed Black to focus on the single regulation of changing the Chicken Farmers of Ontario’s rule restricting producers without quota to producing no more than 300 birds annually.
Instead, Walker wrote in a Sept. 24 refusal to hear Black’s amended appeal, the Manitoulin bed and breakfast operator submitted “an agglomeration of treatises or manifestos.” The
Walker wrote on Dec. 23: “I am convinced that his intention is, as stated by the Tribunal’s (September) decision, to use the 300 bird exemption to gain a ‘toe-hold’ and then to advance and debate his own personal political agenda. I find that to be not only an abuse of the process of the Tribunal but to be in bad faith. I am not convinced that Mr. Black has made an arguable case that the Tribunal committed an error of law in determining that it should refuse to hear his appeal on those grounds.”
The decision can be found at: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onafraat/doc/2014/2014onafraat34/2014onafraat34.html BF