The bully of Clarington

Usually I write my columns based on news reports that are in the public domain already. But for today's column, I did a fair bit of reporting myself, calling most of the people involved in the story. That included a call to the most belligerent bylaw officer I could imagine, in the town of Clarington, Ontario. He positively boasted to me on the phone about what he had done to the Jaworski family, and what he was planning to do to them still. It was shocking -- and a symptom of a government that no longer sees itself as a servant of the people, or even a policeman to the people, but as an antagonist of the people. The citizens are not the boss in the mind of this man; they are the enemy. He seemed to have a personal mission to harass the Jaworskis using every tool in his large book of laws.

Embarrassing; enraging; frightening. Here's my column:

Bureaucrats leaving a sour taste

One of the few thrills of working as a bylaw enforcement officer is making people cry.

When you’re not allowed to carry a gun like a real cop, you have to make do with the simple pleasures.

Last month, seven-year-old Julie Murphy was made to cry by two bylaw officers when she set up a lemonade stand without a $120 US “temporary restaurant licence” at a street fair in Portland, Ore. Not one, but two bureaucrats were dispatched to stop that menace — and threaten her with a $500 fine. She left the fair in tears.

Only after a public outcry did politicians drop the charges — but not without first insisting they had every legal right to prosecute the seven-year-old. She had broken the law; it was only their mercy that would spare her.

That same bureaucratic spirit — meanness; blind adherence to the letter of the law; a disconnect with reality; all done with a hostility to private enterprise — is now on display in the municipality of Clarington, east of Toronto.

It’s not a lemonade crime wave that the brave city elders of Clarington are combating. It’s the menace of backyard barbecues.

Peter Jaworski has been holding backyard barbecues at his parents’ property there for 10 years. It’s a house in the country on 40 secluded acres. Once a year, Peter invites a few dozen of his friends to spend the weekend eating his mom’s cooking and camping next to the swimming hole. I’ve been there: it’s one part family reunion, one part picnic and one part political talk.

So clearly, the Jaworski family must be stopped.

First came the health department. They poked and prodded, and even took water samples. No one has ever got sick at a Jaworski barbecue — the opposite; everyone comes for the food — but the government ordered that no home cooking would be allowed. The Jaworskis complied with these costly and ridiculous demands, catering the whole weekend and serving only bottled water, at great cost.

But bureaucrats travel in packs. A local bylaw enforcement officer waited until the barbecue itself, and marched right onto the property — no search warrant needed! — and started peppering the guests with questions.

He wasn’t a health officer; he was a bylaw officer. Yet he demanded to know what the guests had for lunch. In the name of the law!

Armed with this devastating information, the officer charged Peter’s parents with running an illegal “commercial conference centre,” which carries a fine of up to $50,000. The officer, a burly, tattooed, six-foot-something man, told Peter’s mom to “be very careful.” She burst into tears.

I phoned that bylaw officer to ask him about the Jaworskis. I found a man on a mission, boasting to me that his next step would be to take down the street sign for the family’s small bed and breakfast.

He was particularly pleased that he could do that without issuing a summons, or even receiving a complaint. When he sensed my sympathy for the Jaworskis, he hung up on me.

The Jaworski family has dealt with bigger bullies before.

They were democracy activists who fled communist Poland in 1984. Unlike in Poland, they’ll have a free press and fair courts to help them now.

But freedom isn’t free; their fight against red tape bullies will likely cost them just as much as the $50,000 fine would.

Clarington should be ashamed.

 

P.S. If you want to learn more about the Jaworskis, or chip in to their legal defence fund, visit their website, here.