Seizing the Excavator

A prison warden on every corner, demanding blind obedience to foolish edicts.

A Caterpillar 330 excavator. Photo from the manufacturer’s website.

It's April 2020. The earliest weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brad Howland is minding his own business. On his own private property. At the end of a two-mile dirt road in rural New Brunswick.

When Brad looks at a tumbled down farm, he sees productive fields and well tended trees. Using excavators, a bulldozer, a rock truck, and a tractor he reclaims sections of his large acreage, much of which was acquired by his late father.

"That's my hobby," he explains. "It's like landscaping 40 acres at a time. So I clear land, take an old farm back to where it used to be. I develop the field and straighten out the brooks. I build ponds."

Friends and family are apt to tease him mid-project. "It gets real messy when you're doing that sort of work," he says. There's mud everywhere. But the finished product is supremely satisfying. "I like bringing things back."

At the time, Brad had no way of knowing he’d be targeted by a class-action lawsuit three years later. He hadn’t the slightest inkling he’d end up being sued for $290 million by a handful of urban Canadians who said a three-week trucker protest had inexcusably disrupted their lives. All he knew was he was being hassled by the government.

When you clear land at his scale, you end up with massive brush piles that need to be burned off. The best time to do that is after dark when flames and sparks are highly visible. Brad lit up five of them that evening. The authorities showed up at 1 am. No burning was allowed, they said. Due to COVID, they said. Hypothetically, firefighters might need to be called. Hypothetically, they might contract the disease.  

Brad remembers thinking:

This can't be real. I'm a farmer, a registered farmer on my land, clearing land, getting land ready for production. I have to burn because these piles are in my way. These were 20-foot high piles, big piles of brush. The peace officers, the forest rangers, wanted to know where my burn permit was. Well, they gave me a burn permit. But it was for one fire at a time, 10 feet high, four-mile-an-hour winds. I had to have a guy watching me, spotting. The list was so long, there's no way you could abide by that permit and burn your piles.

I said, 'Look, you fellas know about my permit.'

They said, 'Well, you've got to show us the permit.'

Climbing down out of his excavator, he retrieved it from his pickup truck. That's when they told him he wasn't allowed back in the excavator. Within days, "they seized my excavator," he says. "Now this is an 85,000-pound, 330 CAT excavator with all these attachments. It was very heavy. They came with eight forest rangers, an RCMP vehicle, and escorts."

This happened during the spring thaw, a period in which there are strict rules about how much weight is permitted on roads and highways. In Brad's view, it "was in no way legal to transport this type of machine" at that time of year with the regular tandem tractor and tridem float used by the authorities.

"They took it to Fredericton," he says, estimating that by the time the task was complete the personnel involved would likely have billed taxpayers for a 12-hour day.  

"You know, it's a $70,000 excavator. I had to hire a lawyer, which cost me $16,000, pay a fine of another $15,000, plus pay $1,800 to have the excavator delivered back to me." All of which took several months. It was "very disheartening," he says.

This is what happens when an 'emergency' is declared. All sense of proportion vanishes. Even in remote farm fields. In the province with the lowest infection rate. Long before a single COVID death has even occurred.

In an 'emergency,' common sense does not prevail. Inalienable rights and freedoms dissolve in the wind, as though they never existed. Petty officials constrain, impede, suppress, and dictate. Follow the rules. Do what you're told. Don't argue. Medical personnel, mall cops, government employees of every description, even supermarket cashiers bark out orders. Courtesy evaporates. Respectful dialogue, negotiation between equals, what's that?

COVID taught us that ordinary people get treated like criminals during ‘emergencies.’ It turns out there's a prison warden on every corner, demanding nothing less than blind obedience. To the most foolish edicts imaginable.

Stop burning those brush piles!

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