Archer seeks $154,000 after failed prosecution
Court rejected charges laid by officers from Lower Trent Conservation
Unlike the song from the 1960s, Peter Archer fought the law and the law lost.
Now he wants the law, in this case Lower Trent Conservation (LTC), to voluntarily pay his $154,000 bill for the lawyer, agrologist, and aborist he had to hire to defend himself from its charges. Otherwise he told the conservation authority’s board in December that he’ll sue for reimbursement and add that cost to the bill.
Chances are good that he would win because after a five-day hearing in November, Justice of the Peace Leona Dombrowsky dismissed all eight charges against Archer. Dombrowsky is a former environment minister and agriculture minister who lives in Tweed and has been a JP since her defeat in the 2011 election.
The authority’s board simply listened to Archer’s comments and so far has not responded. Chief Administrative Officer Rhonda Bateman said in an email that since it is a legal matter it will be discussed by the board in camera. She said any response to Archer’s complaints would have to come from the board.
On a phone call, Archer didn’t want to talk too much either, because he hopes to reach a settlement without any more legal action.
During last week’s Trent Hills council meeting, Deputy Mayor Michael Metcalf asked the councillors who represent the municipality on the LTC board — Gene Brahaney and Rick English — to keep council informed about the issue, since the cost of reimbursing Archer would likely be paid in part by Trent Hills.
The story starts four years ago when Archer, who owns Maizeing Acres Inc., the grain handling complex on Highway 30, was in a field on the farm cutting down ash trees that had been killed by the emerald ash borer.
Someone spotted him clearing the trees and complained to Lower Trent Conservation that Archer was working on a wetland. A conservation officer visited and insisted that Archer was trying to develop a wetland and ordered him to stop. The LTC got a search warrant and took soil tests to bolster its position.
The authority then classified 10 acres of Archer's land as a wetland, a decision that Archer contested due to the absence of any official wetland designation.
He insisted that the field was not a wetland. It was well drained and only had standing water after an unusual amount of rain.
As the legal case dragged on, Archer tried several times to reach a settlement, without luck.
When he appeared before the conservation authority’s board in December, he asked what was going to change within the organization as a result of the unacceptable process he had experienced.
He said there was evidence of malice against him and referred to comments by staff during the trial. He also pointed out what he called the negative attitude of staff towards him throughout the negotiations.
After four years of court delays, four days of hearing evidence, and one day of closing arguments, Justice of the Peace Dombrowsky ruled that Archer was not guilty on all eight charges on Oct. 30 in Belleville provincial court.
Archer’s lawyer, Jacob Damstra of Lerners LLP in London, told the court that Archer was clearing dry land and that ash borer had killed the trees, Farmers Forum reported. He added that Archer retained an agrologist, a biologist, and an arborist who completed a multi-faceted assessment and concluded: “You could never turn it into a wetland because of all the drainage around it.”
He noted that “the area had never been classified or designated as a wetland” and the conservation authority couldn’t do it because it couldn’t meet the four tests of a wetland.
Archer said he had been concerned that Dombrowsky, as a former Liberal environment minister, might not accept his arguments, but after listening carefully to days of evidence she did.
(Full disclosure: Back in 2003-5 I was communications manager for Dombrowsky when she was Environment Minister, then Agriculture Minister, in the early years of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government.)