MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter was submitted by Gary Machan, a member of the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition.
Central to the health and prosperity of rural communities is the presence of strong leadership; be it at the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government. All are important.
At the federal level, you want trade deals that don’t throw farmers under the bus, just as at the provincial level you need policies to protect farmers and prime agricultural land.
Most important of all, you need strong municipal councils since they are closest to the people living in rural communities and therefore best informed to make decisions on their behalf. Ideally, working together with the provincial and federal governments on matters as critical as ensuring Canada has enough food to feed its burgeoning population. Bear in mind, most of Canada’s remaining prime agricultural land is located south of the Canadian shield in Ontario.
Enter Doug Ford, who has essentially declared war on rural communities including the one I happen to live in which is Oro-Medonte. He is doing so by systematically stripping away what little power Oro-Medonte previously had to manage its future growth and granting the City of Barrie (and other large cities) the power to expand its boundaries through the Sprawl Is Us act.
And now we find out Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttal has just been granted special powers (along with other big-city mayors) to essentially do as he pleases, should he be so inclined.
But here is the thing. While this might look like a win for the City of Barrie, it is anything but, since more sprawl will invariably result in higher taxes for its existing homeowners; never mind the host of other problems that comes in its wake ranging from increased traffic congestion to poorer air quality as was projected by the Smart Growth panels established by Mike Harris in 2002. Most members of Barrie council are smart enough to know they have nothing to gain by building more sprawl.
Still, it does beg the question: if this isn’t a win for the residents of Barrie or Oro-Medonte, who is benefiting from Ford’s Sprawl is Us agenda? So far as I can see, the only winners in Doug Ford’s schemes are his billionaire developer buddies.
Not only did they know what parcels of land to purchase prior to the reduction of the Greenbelt, but now development fees they were once required to pay will be passed along to municipalities and from there to existing homeowners.
All of which brings us back to the importance of leadership. Here the mayor and members of Oro-Medonte’s council are to be commended for doing all they can to maintain their ability to govern at the municipal level. Ditto for the County of Simcoe for doing its best to protect all of its municipalities which are largely rural, sprinkled in with the odd town here and there. The trouble is they can’t do it alone.
This, in turn, brings us to MPP Doug Downey. For if ever there was a time for him to show leadership now is it. Surely, he has to know the concerns of his municipal counterparts in Oro-Medonte, just as he must be cognizant of the fact that the City of Barrie already has close to 20,000 units that have been approved by their council. The delays in construction are because of the developers, not a lack of approved land.
Bottom line: rural municipalities have been ‘true blue’ since time primordial, and farmers most especially. However, should Ford persist in ramming sprawl down the throat of rural municipalities, and ignoring the cries of ‘don’t do it Doug’ from multiple farm spokespeople, then there could be some significant repercussions come the next provincial election and most especially for MPP Doug Doweny given he barely won his riding in the last vote. He will need every rural vote he can get.
Gary Machan
Oro-Medonte
