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
