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Let’s abolish lobbyists

March 3, 2014   ·   0 Comments

Lobbying has become the norm for low-class individuals who are doing the dirty work for large wealthy corporations with governments all across Canada   (Think Rob Ford in Toronto, he loves them because it paves the way for him to keep acting like the loser he shows us he is every day).

What are we getting for the big dollars lobbyists are being paid to give the likes of land developers an easy way around poorly written and executed laws protecting our farmland with the devastation of poorly designed housing developments, from the standpoint of an Official Plan?  Little boxes popping up everywhere, miles from shopping areas, work areas, and the big cities, and the best option for the population to access these areas is the almighty automobile.  Think gridlock. We are losing over 300 acres of some of the best farmland in the world 24/7/365 to the spread of these suburban blights in concert with quarries and what we get are gridlock and the developers run to the bank with millions of dollars from buying the land which in truth doesn’t really belong to them upon which to make a huge profit.

The saddest theme of all this is our Ontario Government is doing NOTHING  to control this onslaught when in fact they should have laws to protect land because once it is gone it will be gone forever.  Their lack of understanding of this fact is unimaginable as it stares them in their face every day.  So if they are not working to protect the land, they are consciously working to destroy it with poor or no legislation for the sake of money, because what we see with the condo mess from the Gadriner Expressway is the same lack of planning for what we see driving up the 404 and now Hwy 410/10 north.   Once-productive farms, are being swept aside for high-cost urban sprawl and it seems there is no one to speak up for the land.

In Europe and many states in the U.S. they protect their farmland with very strict laws banning any development, knowing there is no more being made to grow food on and to clean their water.

Well-heeled developers hire their bag-men to wave large amounts of money under the noses of hard-working farmers to give up land that if it were protected by law it would never happen and the government would be forced to establish sensible Official Plans to accommodate all factions involved in how we develop our resources.   Now there is just a bunch of rich greedy people grabbing what they can for a huge profit and to hell with any official planning.

Canada is the second largest land mass in our world but has only .05% left for growing food for 35 million people, and that number includes the vastness of our prairies and the most fertile of farmland in the world right here in Southern Ontario.

Historically, we must keep in mind that probably 95% of Canada’s population lives within a very narrow corridor of 5,000 X 300 miles East to West, North to South and that is where we produce our food build our cities and towns and develop our transportation systems.

Not too long ago the talk was that we will never cut down all the trees in Canada.  Guess what, machinery could clear cut the remaining trees in Canada in less than five years.  Could that happen to our farmland too?

What we are seeing is absolute madness going on right before our eyes.   In the 80’s the Bill Davis government paid a New Jersey consultant huge taxpayer dollars to report on the status of land use in Southern Ontario and his recommendations were to stop wasting our farmland, develop an Official Plan to keep housing close to work areas   …   make it more efficient, put large industry into its own area, develop a rapid rail system province-wide and subways to move people quickly in urban areas.  The consultant was instrumental in getting the State of New Jersey to change its wanton destruction of land use and they have spent billions of dollars for many decades to reverse this destruction, which today is still ongoing, and remarkably have repatriated some farming communities.

I am urging our Ontario government to give this some very serious consideration and especially to remember that it took a huge effort by concerned citizens to block the establishment of a mega quarry in Melancthon Township in 2013, and we continue with another fight to put a stop to the destruction of very productive farmland where the federal government wants an unneeded airport in Pickering.

We need another huge effort to force them to modernize the Aggregate Resources Act and enact laws protecting our farmland from developers and stop the lobbyist business from running our government(s), unless of course the government gets off its collective hands and enacts laws to protect our land and water.

The next big local issue is the monster Melville quarry which would never have been approved by Caledon Council if laws governing where they can be established were written to protect home owners and the town of Orangeville and our farmland.    It is time for the Ontario Government to move the aggregate industry to Northern Ontario where there is an unlimited supply of aggregates.

Ron Lehman

Orangeville, ON

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