A discussion with a fellow OntORA member today left me bewildered as to how some MNR COs haphazardly use their powers as officers of the law. He said his friend drove 6hrs to a camp on Manitoulin to meet up with some friends for a bit of hunting, he arrived about a half hour after sunset and was met by a CO who on discovering he had no case on the crossbow charged him. The fellow had been driving for quite a while and expected to reach camp before dark plus he'd not even thought about his bow amongst his gear, he was shocked when instead of being charged for not having the bow in a case after sunset he was charged with hunting at night  even though he obviously wouldn't have had time. The judge ruled there was no proof he was hunting.

This past March a friend in the Wawa District had some minnows in a livewell near his house in preparation for a local ice fishing derby, a CO who had to have been looking for it precisely charged him for not having his name on a livewell even though a couple lines down the Act states that this does not apply to a livewell containing baitfish, something most of us knew…go figure. He fought it and won.

In three cases  people have been charged with "trespass on a premises for the purpose of hunting or fishing" when they drove their vehicle past a sign that had no bearing on this Act. To top it off this was on Crown land where hunting and fishing was in season and legal on both sides of the road, the charge pertained to only the road which isn't a premises, you can't discharge a firearm from a road so you can't hunt on it anyways let alone fish, the MNR referred to this as a vehicular offense for driving past the sign but charged everyone associated with it. Better yet, these people were charged with this offense because the road was closed "to protect remote tourism values", thats right, not because they'd committed any offense under the Fish & Wildlife Conservation Act. The MNR had instructed their staff to enforce a road closure with this Act even though the Public Lands Acts s.49 says no other Act may be used to close roads. The set fine is $100 if this was a legitimate offense but each of these people were hit with $1000 fines. The only person who fought this charge won.

I'm not trying to bash the MNR because they have a job to do, most of their COs are fair and personally I've been treated with courtesy but recently I've been made aware of too many such instances. What kind of training are they getting and where is the discretion?

At the moment the MNR hasn't any legislation allowing them to close these roads, especially for the purpose of "protecting remote tourism values", they'd been getting away with PLA s.28 but it has nothing to do with roads.

PLA Part II, sec 48 to 55(1) governs roads on public lands but it only pertains to Private and public forest roads and these are neither. When an Act or Part of an Act controls roads a preamble begins with definitions of the roads that it governs so that the COs know which Act to apply to which category of road but s.28 (1) only says a sign may be erected on a road and s.28(2) which has the offences makes no mention to roads at all. My first introduction to s.28 was in the local MNR office, I read it and my first impulse was to ask exactly what roads it governed, the answer was a sheepish "I don't know", I came back with "then how can you apply it to a road then, can you just arbitrarily close public forest roads and skip the safety regulations in PLA 52(3) & (4), can you close a private forest road with s.28 without consideration of 54(5) which refers you back to 54(2) for a special agreement under the Highway Traffic Act? They could not defend themselves.

Lately the MNR has been using S.10(1a) from the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act "trespass on a premises for the purpose of hunting or fishing" and blatantly stating that they're closing the road with it "to protect remote-based tourism values" even though s.49 of the PLA very clearly says that unless stated by this Act (Public Lands Act), the public has right of passage on all roads on public lands. Besides, according to the "Trespass to Property Act" a road is not a premises and you can't discharge a firearm from or across a road anyways. There were no signs in either of the three cases I'm aware of erectede under the FWCA to warn the public of trespassing…besides on both sides of the road was Crown land where it was legal to hunt and the charge only pertained to the road but there were no infractions for discharging a firearm and thus hunting on the road. According to PLA 50 the Crown is not liable on roads on Crown land but in a case of an area being a premises the owner or person leasing the property would be liable under the Occupiers Liability Act…its nothing but an abuse of power for the MNR to apply this on the public to give their lands away like this.