Recent decisions made by the Ontario Court of Justice in a Huron County case serve as a cautionary tale for farmers and landowners about the steep penalties that can follow illegal woodland clearing. A farm corporation and its sole director were each convicted of two offences under the County’s Forest Conservation By-law: unlawfully destroying a woodland and failing to obey a stop work order. The case involved the clearing of approximately 6 to 7 acres of forest (about 2.75 hectares) on a farm property, estimated to involve the destruction of roughly 10,000 trees. The penalties imposed by the Court for the violations may be unprecedented for tree clearing by a rural landowner in Ontario.
The farm corporation involved had filed a Notice of Intent under the Forest Conservation By-law for a selective harvest plan to remove dead ash trees. The plan was prepared by a professional forester and approved by the County’s forestry staff in accordance with the By-law. During a site visit in early 2021, the County’s Forest Conservation Officer explicitly warned that the woodlot qualified as a protected “woodland” and could not be clear-cut for agriculture. Despite this warning, it was later discovered that between March and July 2023, the woodland was largely bulldozed and piled for removal. Upon spotting large piles of pushed-out trees on the site in June 2023, the County issued a Stop Work Order. However, when officials returned with a search warrant in August, they found the piles gone and evidence of recent burning – meaning the order had been ignored and the felled trees had been burned in the interim.
Estimates derived from GPS mapping and sample plots showed about 6.8 acres of woodland destroyed, representing an extrapolated 10,450 trees removed (the average between the high estimate of 15,200 and low estimate of 5,700 trees adopted by the Court). This comfortably met the Forest Conservation By-law’s definition of a protected “woodland” (land 1 ha or more with at least 1,000 trees per hectare). The Court found that the corporation and its director had “caused or permitted” the destruction of a woodland, and further had failed to comply with the stop work order by continuing clearing activities after it was issued. Convictions were registered against both the corporation and its director for both offences.
It is the sentencing decision of the Court that is the most noteworthy aspect of the case. The Huron County Forest Conservation By-law includes remarkably strong penalty provisions. For a first offence, an individual is liable to a fine of up to $10,000 or $1,000 per tree, whichever is greater, and a corporation can be fined up to $50,000 or $5,000 per tree. With well over ten thousand trees removed in this case, the theoretical maximum fine ran into the millions of dollars. The prosecutor sought a total of $500,000 in fines, split between the two defendants. The defence requested a far lower penalty of around $70,000–$80,000 arguing mitigating factors such as the director’s advanced age, lack of prior record, and the fact that the same individual would ultimately pay both the corporate and personal fines.
After weighing the factors relevant to sentencing, the Court emphasized that deterrence and denunciation had to be the primary considerations for this kind of environmental offence. The Justice of the Peace noted there was little in the way of mitigating factors beyond the fact that these were first-time offenders. On the other hand, aggravating factors were plenty: the Defendants knew in advance the land couldn’t be cleared (from the 2021 forester’s plan and site meeting) yet went ahead anyway; a vast number of trees were destroyed; and the stop work order was flouted, effectively destroying evidence by burning the debris. In the words of the Justice of the Peace, the clearing and burning occurred “in full defiance” – conduct which “cannot be condoned by modest penalties.”
In the end, the Court fined the director $175,000 for the woodland destruction and $25,000 for the stop work order violation. The corporation was separately fined an additional $175,000 for the destruction and $25,000 for the stop work count. The fines combined total $400,000 – an enormous sanction in the context of farm tree-cutting cases. The Court also placed both defendants on probation for 2 years to ensure future compliance, including a condition not to commit the same offence again. The By-law also allows the court to order the offender to rehabilitate the land or replant trees, but in this case no replanting order was made. The Defendants had sought an adjournment to explore a replanting plan (presumably to mitigate the fine amount), but no plan was put forward.
The fines levied in this case appear dramatically higher than what has been seen in many past cases under tree protection by-laws, at least in rural areas. The clear message from the Court is that violating woodland protection rules cannot “be seen as a cost of doing business.” In other words, the fines are meant to hurt, not to be simply written off as a business expense. The Justice of the Peace explicitly stated that “other farmers and landowners must understand that if…a woodland is destroyed or…stop work orders are ignored, then there will be serious financial consequences.”
If fines of the magnitude imposed in the Huron County case reflect a shift in thinking about penalties, then the days of “ask forgiveness, not permission” are gone when it comes to clearing woodlands. Violating a tree conservation by-law is not worth the risk. The Huron County prosecution, although it did involve a very large number of trees (estimated) is a stark example of how Ontario courts are prepared to hand down record-setting fines to protect the environment and drive the point home. Landowners are best advised to work within the law – consult with forestry officials, consider sustainable harvesting, or seek proper exemptions if available – rather than face the possible hefty consequences of illegal clearing.
Read the decision at: 2025 ONCJ 514 (CanLII).
