Canadian Farm Law: A Guide for Today's Farmer

Sam Coghlan was Deputy Director and Senior Consultant of the Thames Ontario Library Service Board, Southwestern Ontario.

Persons cultivating an intention to take up farming should be encouraged to read this book even though it may give the forbidding impression that the farmer might need to hire a resident lawyer. The author does cover a remarkably comprehensive number of areas of farming where legal considerations enter in — buying and selling land, mortgages, land use laws, leases, wills and estates, types of business organizations, debt, divorce, helping hands and labour legislation, ways a farmer could be sued, purchase of machinery and, of course, all-pervasive income tax. This all-encompassing approach creates an illusion of the law as being extra-intrusive, but much of the book actually deals with special unlikely but possible situations.

Purich has written about “Canadian” farm law, which fact requires that he discuss the separate laws of individual provinces in the many places they differ. He manages this well, fitting the differentiations easily into the text.

The book’s organization is clear, broken into coherent paragraphs with subtitled sections, so that the table of contents becomes an effective guide to general topics. The index provides more specific access with useful subject headings and sub-headings.

The accuracy of the book is impeccable, except for the obvious consideration that with so much material included (different areas of the law, different provinces) it will soon be outdated. In fact, in the introduction, Punch acknowledges that much of the income tax material will have been made incorrect by the federal government’s November 1983 budget proposals. The book is slightly disappointing as it fails to carry a visible warning that some of the law will change, possibly drastically, following the date of publication. I would recommend that all books on the law for persons lacking legal training carry such a caveat very visibly placed on their covers as well as within the text.

Generally, though, the book covers the area well; the language is sometimes a bit stiff, but this is not a novel. It can serve as well as a volume to be read through by one who wishes a broad overview of Canadian law or as a reference source for farmers wishing to learn a little of the legal ramifications of particular aspects of operating a farm.