Randy Hillier

Randy Alexander Hillier (born 1958) is a Canadian politician who served as a member of provincial parliament (MPP) in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 2007-2022.

Prior to serving as an MPP, in 2003, Hillier co-founded and served as the first president of the Lanark Landowners' Association.

He then assisted in creation of local landowner groups in other parts of Ontario, modelled on the Lanark Landowners.

Between 2003 and 2010, he contributed 11 articles to Le Québécois Libre, a bilingual libertarian online journal that was published in Montreal until 2010.

In 2006, he became the first president of the 15,000-member Ontario Landowners Association (OLA), an umbrella group for these groups.

The OLA was formed "...to preserve and protect the rights of property owners and to enshrine property rights within the Constitution of Canada and the laws of the Province of Ontario."

Under Hillier's leadership, the landowners' groups initially engaged in acts of civil disobedience, including blocking highways, barricading government offices, staging illegal deer hunts, and publicly breaking laws that the landowners regarded as unjust.

Hillier has explained the illegal actions of the landowners as follows:

I believe in non-violent civil disobedience.

I believe when a law or rule is blatantly wrong it is a part of our democratic process to challenge that law.

At times civil disobedience is used to illustrate and further bring attention to the absurdity.

On one occasion in 2006, Hillier was arrested and detained (but not charged) for trespassing during a protest at a water quality meeting in Cornwall.

After the creation of the OLA in 2006, acts of civil disobedience were replaced by attempts to influence the political system by more traditional means.

Landowner-endorsed candidates ran for municipal office in many rural municipalities in the 2006 Ontario municipal elections.

Hillier and other members of the OLA began to appear as witnesses before parliamentary hearings into issues affecting rural areas.

This riding contains much of the dissolved riding of Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, which he represented from 2007 to 2018.

In 2007, when he was seeking election to the provincial legislature, Hillier was challenged to justify his participation four years earlier in an illegal deer hunt.

He responded by stating,

I sent [Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty an email containing] a picture of a dead deer saying the people of Lanark County were removing nuisance deer because the Liberal government had revoked those licences [for farmers to shoot deer that were eating their crops].

I did it four years ago... and I would do it again because I will not stand for injustice and I will not stand for farmers to be put into bankruptcy.

As well as acts of civil disobedience, the landowners conducted demonstrations at Queen's Park and Parliament Hill.

Hillier's ability to attract media notice through the use of attention-grabbing rhetoric and tactics prompted one television commentator to describe him as "Don Cherry in plaid and rubber boots."

Hillier resigned as president of the OLA in 2007 in order to run for a seat in the provincial legislature.

Hillier was elected to the provincial legislature in 2007.

Hillier was a candidate in the 2009 PC leadership election and the interim leadership election in 2014.

He has formerly served as the PC critic for the Attorney General, Labour, Northern Development, and Mines and Forestry in the legislature.

Hillier was a licensed construction electrician (licence expired July 31, 2013) with a diploma in electrical engineering technology from Algonquin College and former employee of the Canadian federal government.

He lives near Perth, Ontario.

In October 2014, Hillier referred to members of the Lanark Landowners' Association as "nutbars," claiming "[w]hen I was there I tried to keep a distance from the fringe elements and the nutbars, if I can put it that way."

The practice adopted by Landowners Associations of seeking original Crown patents for their land "has been, quite frankly, a problem for me as an MPP," Hillier said.

"People are following this advice and not getting building permits, and then when the building inspectors visit them they’re phoning me as their MPP and seeking my assistance."

Hillier is the author of numerous editorials on a wide range of policy issues.

Hillier represented the riding of Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston as an independent MPP from 2019 to 2022.

Hillier was initially elected as a Progressive Conservative (PC) Party MPP, remaining a member until he was removed in 2019.

Despite announcing that he would run for election under the banner of the Ontario First Party in November 2021, Hillier announced in March 2022 that he would not seek re-election.

Hillier was removed from the PC Party by Premier Doug Ford in 2019 after making disrespectful comments to parents of children with autism.

He has been outspoken against the use of facemasks, vaccines, and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He spent extensive time at the "Freedom Convoy", encouraging people to flood police phone lines during the clearance of protesters, and is currently on bail following nine charges related to his activity around the protest.

He sat as an independent MPP until the dissolution of Parliament on May 3, 2022.

As of August 2022, Hillier provides landscaping and excavation services.