A glass of milk may not seem like a drink to start a revolution, but when Justice Paul Kawarski made his ruling recently in favour of Durham dairy farmer Michael Schimdt, he was doing more than just saying raw milk cow share agreements are legal.

In making his ruling, Kawarski used words not heard in a Canadian court, or almost anywhere else in the county for decades, when he said “but that does not apply to members of a group that are fully aware of, and prepared to accept the risk of consuming raw milk."

Whether Kawarski meant to or not, his words as well as his ruling may force a rethink of what has happened in Canada for the past four decades.

The balance between the rights and obligations of individuals in a free society and where they collide with the common good is always delicate, but for the past 40 years, the scale has tilted too far towards the needs of society and away from individual rights.

Accepting risk is something that has increasingly been taken out of our hands for the past 40 years, in the name of protecting us from our own poor decisions.

To further this a web of regulations has intruded on every segment of society, both inside and outside the home, to the point we are treading closer to a soft tyranny in the name of a perfect society.

From safety and environmental laws to the food we consume and parental rights, Kawarski may have restarted the debate on the rights of the individual set against society.

While the case is already being appealed and will probably end at the highest court in the land in a few years, Schmidt may well become known as one of the men who threw the first glass of cold raw milk in the face of the nanny state.