Letter
to Premier Doug Ford:
Hello
Premier Ford,
.
I
would like to congratulate you and your government for the way that you have
been handling this terrible crisis that has put the world on shut down. I also
agree with you when you said that we must start to bring back to Ontario, the
production of products that we all depend on for our health and security. With
that in mind, what could be more important than our own food supply.
.
Competition
from countries where the climate is more favourable to growing vegetables and fruits, plus the manipulation of large
corporations that have bought up and removed nearly all large canning and
processing plants from the Niagara fruit belt, has left Ontario with only
seasonal products from this province. This is also a problem with provincial
slaughter plants that have virtually disappeared from this province for several
reasons but the most often reason was because of aggressive interference of
non-health related regulations (demanding dual washrooms in a small plant was
just unaffordable).
.There
is also a shortage of slaughter space in the Federal plants and much of our
beef has to go to the United States for processing, which was the case during
the “Mad Cow” disaster of 2004 where we could not slaughter our own animals for
hamburger. The border closing for over 2 years almost destroyed our cattle
industry which has never fully recovered. If this or the next disaster closed
the border with the U.S, we will be back in the same situation.
.rFarm-land
is also under pressure all over the province, from the municipal official plans
with the Conservation Authorities identifying wetlands that for years have been
farmed and the Heritage Groups identifying special features to restrict the use
of the land. Tree-cutting bylaws are stopping farmers from cutting ‘brush’ on
farm fields that they have just bought. Often these are farms where the farming
operations have been abandoned often due to health or no one to take over.
There should never be a restriction on re-clearing land that was farmed a few
years ago. There is no Amazon Rain forest being cleared in Ontario, as
virtually all land being cleared was farmed before with horses, then abandoned
because of two-wheel drive tractors, and now are again viable with tile
drainage.
.
I
would ask all politicians to take a close look at agriculture and see how
fragile this sector of our society is and then think of how important it is to
be self-sufficient in food especially in the time of crisis. The founding
fathers of this nation, who wrote the blueprint for how this new country, Canada, was to be operated, put the
importance of agriculture above everything except mining. They even allowed
farmers to cut the trees reserved for the Crown if it was to create fields,
fences or buildings.
.
I
think that it is time to put agriculture back in its special place of
importance, where it would be again recognized as an ‘essential service’. Let’s
stop these special interest groups like conservation authorities and the MNR
from morphing the legislation that they get their power from, into something
that says they have control over agriculture.
.
We
have all seen on the news how China turned the boats back that had masks
heading for North America, because they needed them. No one blames them for
doing that but we should never again allow our country to be dependent on the
rest of the world when there is a crisis, we must be self-reliant at least in
our food supply.
.
Our
lives and those of our families, depend on it.
.
Tom BlackBeef and grain farmer
Stittsville, Ontario
613-831-2642
"All Struggle is Political" -ph
Don't wait until you are starving to address the food shortage the media is already predicting. For those who are concerned about our food supply, write your MP's and express your concern in 2 - 3 sentences with another sentence or two with a solution on how to overcome this problem. Here is the link to finding your provincial representatives: https://www.ola.org/en/members/current/contact-information
ReplyDeleteI have written to Jeff Yurek, Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks and expressed to him that we need to become self-reliant for our food source again because the U.S. and Mexico will have their own hungry to feed; there will be no guarantee they can supply us. We know from past experiences that any number of things can happen that will wipe out crops, insects, plant disease, rodents, lack of rain, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.. jeff.yurek@pc.ola.org
All layers of government interference need to be removed, i.e., wetland, floodplain, special species, cutting brush to expand acreage for planting, etc. It is time our government acknowledges the 'essential service' farmers provide to this province and country; if we are looking for food on our table this coming winter we need to allow our farmers to plant their crops right now; with no interference from Niagara Escarpment Commission, Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, conservation authorities, municipal bylaw interferences, etc.
There are two ways of thinking and organizing. You seem to be critical of the Alpha social norms and I suggest with good reason. I am starting to provide information on the Alpha/Theta controversy which is I believe becoming more of an issue as we see how unsustainable the Alpha experience is. How Evil People Think
ReplyDeleteTo understand reality and the problems of man we need to understand evil. The term encompasses all those things we think should not exists, but do. Think of evil as the sum total of all your problems tied in a bundle that collectively distill down into a single point of origin. We call that point of origin, evil. Evil is the way a certain group of persons think. There are two models of reality that dictate how we think. People are not so much evil as their thinking is evil. The way they look at reality is evil and the way they think about reality is evil, because it produces our problems and theirs. Understanding how evil people think is important because unless we understand how they think we cannot ensure we are not thinking in the way Evil men think. https://anchor.fm/robert-burk/episodes/How-Evil-People-Think-eccatk