‘Fiscal fire’

Dear Editor:

The “Protect Our Food Act” is being sold as a shield for Ontario’s farmers. But look closer at the timing and the targets, and you’ll see it for what it really is: a weaponized piece of legislation designed to stop one specific development at the cost of every municipality in the province.

Bill 21 was drafted with a surgical goal: to kill the Nanticoke MZO. The proponents have built a “foodbelt” trap specifically designed to override the Minister’s Zoning Order process. But here is the problem with using a shotgun to kill a fly: you hit everyone else in the room.

Under Bill 21, new aggregate pits are targeted by mandatory “foodbelt” mapping and agricultural impact assessments designed to prohibit them. When we can’t source gravel locally, it may have to be hauled from 50km away. With oil prices surging past $90 per barrel this month, those haulage costs are skyrocketing.

Who pays that bill? Your local municipality. And when the town can’t expand its tax base because Bill 21 has “encircled” the community, the council has only one lever left to pull: raising property taxes on the people already here. That includes you.

But the squeeze doesn’t stop at your tax bill; it hits your barn. Look at our chicken farmers. A quota for 17,000 birds only works if there are 17,000 customers who can afford to buy them. When Bill 21 freezes housing supply and drives up property taxes, the family’s food budget gets cut. They switch to cheaper alternatives.

Suddenly, your 17,000-bird market shrinks to 14,000. Your margins are being crushed by rising input taxes on one side and falling consumer demand on the other.

Don’t let the “noble cause” fool you. Bill 21 was drafted to solve a private political grudge in one riding, but it’s going to cause a fiscal fire in yours. It’s time farm organizations start reading the fine print before they accidentally finish endorsing our own insolvency.

Gary De Bock,
Delhi