Patrick Meagher
Farmers Forum editor
As of this writing, 71-year-old beef farmer Ron Greene was sitting in an Ottawa jail and had been there for four weeks.
He is not a criminal. He has not been convicted of a crime. About 45 beef animals that he had already sold but were still on his property were scooped up in a raid by PAWS (Provincial Animal Welfare Services) also known as the animal police. One calf was killed in the police stampede.
“It was a gong show,” said former MPP and beef farmer Jack MacLaren. The animals were thin and have since been trucked to the buyer and fattened up. But Greene was furious and blamed a neighbour for calling PAWS. An acquaintance said that a frustrated Greene blurted out something to the effect of, “If I had a gun I’d shoot the inspector and my neighbour.”
Word got around and a police swat team showed up and went through Greene’s house, west of urban Ottawa, and found an old unused 22-calibre rifle in his pickup truck. He was charged with uttering a threat and was hauled off to jail. JAIL?
Hold the phone, officer. Can’t we have a conversation about what’s a threat and what’s an emotional outburst while under stress? Can’t we talk about the context and who said it? We are talking about a 71-year-old active farmer with only one working eye and an old rifle for shooting coyotes.
Have you ever in your life been physically threatened or threatened anyone out of frustration or in anger? Do you remember in school one kid telling another, “Leave me alone or I’ll punch you in the face.”
“Maybe you’ve heard one kid say, “I’ll kill you if you do that again.”
How about as an adult? Have you ever heard anyone in frustration or anger say that he would like to kill a public figure?
Does anyone really think these people will do it? No one takes it seriously because it’s hyperbole. It’s provocative rhetoric, bluster that doesn’t mean anything. Saying the threat is part of the cure. One threatens to kill someone and by just saying it he gets some of that anger out of his system. We recognize this as impulsive but often cathartic.
“If he does that again, I’ll kick his ass.” Taken literally, that’s uttering a threat of assault. But it’s also a common saying in a moment of frustration. It’s part of the Canadian vocabulary.
Much of our vocabulary is peppered with exaggeration and not meant to be taken literally. What have we heard after a hockey fight? “I killed him.” He meant he won the fight. He didn’t mean the other guy is actually dead. Who won the game? “We killed them.”
The more graphic and the more exaggerated, the more emotionally satisfying.
Context is important. If you learned that the animal police swiped your cattle and you thought a neighbour was to blame, you might not be in the mood for beer and pizza. You might want to shout obscenities and tell the world there’s a neck you want to wring.
But an added factor is that Greene says he did not utter a threat and only a third party claims to have heard it.
As for the rifle, there are very few people who think the law is not out of line. Over reach by government is now commonplace. The man has an old .22 rifle he barely uses and he is a farmer. But at least in Canada you are innocent until proven guilty, right? Not so fast, Mr. Greene, have we got a cell in the Innes Road jail for you. And you only get two visits a week of 20 minutes each.
It gets worse.
Canada has what is called a catch and release justice system in which those charged with actual crimes, including violent crimes, are released back into society while awaiting trial. The most infamous case is that of a man who shot and killed a police officer in 2022.
Canadian police now have the term “super-chronic offender” for someone who commits more than one crime every month. They have committed real crimes, they have a criminal record and they are back on the street. In 2022, Vancouver reported that the city’s 40 most prolific criminals had committed 2,152 career convictions, which is an average of 54 each. You can’t rack up that many crimes if you spend time in the slammer.
The release of criminals is so outrageous that in 2023, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police penned a letter stating that Canada has a “criminal justice system that renders much of our work pointless.”
Last summer, Toronto Police upended a massive Ontario car theft ring: 124 arrests, 177 stolen vehicles recovered, and 749 charges laid. According to a National Post report “police didn’t even have time to announce the arrests in a press release before 61 per cent (of those charged) were given bail” and were back on the streets.
But not the 71-year-old beef farmer, who saw 45 cattle carted away and happens to own an old rilfe. He is getting a gut-wrenching hard lesson on how sick this country has become.
Patrick Meagher is editor of Farmers Forum and can be reached at editor@farmersforum.com
