A number of Ontario farmers are elevating considerations about dwindling farmland throughout the province as politicians of all stripes collect at an annual rural and agricultural expo.
Ontario politicians have descended upon Lindsay, Ont., as a part of their annual pilgrimage to the Worldwide Plowing Match.
A number of farmers from the Waterloo area say they’re involved with a large land meeting of prime farmland within the space that’s cloaked in non-disclosure agreements.
The Area of Waterloo has mentioned it’s attempting to assemble a supersite in an effort to lure a large manufacturing plant.
The province is funding the land meeting, however Premier Doug Ford says he desires the area to deal with farmers pretty.
Farmers say they’re at midnight and beneath menace of expropriation by the area.
Alfred Lowrick, who lives subsequent to the goal web site, mentioned your entire course of has proven an absence of respect to farmers and the lack of farmland.
“We do not perceive why unexpectedly it got here out of the blue,” mentioned Lowrick, a spokesperson for the grassroots group, Struggle for Farmland.
“We would like these 770 acres again, this is not acceptable.”
Lowrick’s mother-in-law lives inside the realm the area is concentrating on and is being pressured to promote, he mentioned.
About two dozen farmers from Wilmot, Ont., throughout the Waterloo area got here all the way down to the occasion and silently held up protest indicators when Ford spoke on the opening ceremonies.
Kevin Ferguson got here all the way down to the occasion from his farm south of Ottawa. He believes Ford’s Progressive Conservative authorities are doing an excellent job, typically.
“There’s loads of widespread sense strikes that we like,” he mentioned.
However Ferguson believes the federal government has one massive drawback.
“The largest concern coming from a farm background is shedding good farmland to construct once they might produce other selections,” he mentioned. “It must cease.”
Catherine Fife, a New Democrat who represents the driving of Waterloo, mentioned the province can present they care about farmers by not funding the land meeting in her area.
“There was not one public assembly, not one fiscal report back to most people, and now there’s only a finger pointing train between the regional authorities and the PC authorities, whereby they’re blaming one another,” Fife mentioned.
“However on the finish of the day, it’s Doug Ford who’s funding it, and so he’s driving this entire course of.”
She mentioned the secrecy behind the challenge is “flat-out undemocratic.”
Political get together leaders are set to hop on tractors later within the day in a problem to see who can plow the straightest furrow.
Ford obtained a cool reception on the occasion final yr after the explosion of the Greenbelt land-opening scandal, a transfer farmers opposed as a result of it could have meant creating prime agricultural land.
Ford in the end reversed his choice and returned parcels of land to the Greenbelt, however the RCMP are conducting an investigation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Oct. 1, 2024.
