Fourteen year Parliamentary veteran, interim Liberal leader and MP for Toronto Centre announced his retirement from the House, stepping down from his seat July 2.

Bob Rae has already secured the Liberal nomination to run for the vacant seat; that rumbling you hear is the army of NDP activists across Ontario making ready to march on the riding for an anticipated summer byelection.  Reap the whirlwind, El-Farouk Khaki.

Has OMAFRA failed in its vital public trust in protecting agriculture, food, health, the environment, and rural communities and economies- the NFU thinks so.

 A commentary for the National Farmers Union-Ontario
By Grant Robertson

 The NFU is about to take a bold and unprecedented step in leadership.  A step that we hope will make a real difference for farmers across this province in years to come.  A step that we hope will ensure that the public's trust in the development and enactment of food policy in Ontario is respected.  A step that was revealed to be even more necessary than ever, after the recent policy actions of the Minister of Agriculture. 

 First the Minister's actions.  On June 8 the Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs sent around a media release suggesting that government was taking a bold step on behalf of Ontario's farmers.  The truth, unfortunately, was a little different.  The Minister kicked in the Ontario portion of a previous federal announcement on cost of production assistance, welcomed news to be sure and worthy of congratulation if she had stopped there.  But a bold step hardly.  It was not even surprising given we are just months away from an election. 

 The Minister then moved to a pilot project to implement a risk management program that presumably will target grain and oil seed farmers, although not a single detail was released.  Grain and Oil seed farmers, supported officially by at least two of Ontario's three general farm organizations- the NFU and the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, placed a detailed plan on the Minister’s table over two years ago.  If you remember the Farmers Feed Cities campaign, it was in support of this plan.  Two years later, the Minister makes a promise of a promise on the eve of an election, yet with two years to prepare for the moment not a single detail was available.  Yet again the Minister has shown that farm policy in Ontario is little more than ad hoc designed to solve short term political problems for government, not deal with the real issues farmers are facing.  Give them a photo-op, promise them some help and hope they go away seems to be the prevailing attitude.  It is clear this is not going to change any time soon no matter what party is in government.

 So the NFU has taken a bold step.  The NFU has filed an official complaint with the Ombudsman of Ontario asking for an investigation of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food.  It is the NFU’s submission that OMAFRA has failed in its vital public trust in protecting agriculture, food, health, the environment, and rural communities and economies.  While some groups have asked for the audit of Agricorp, which the NFU supports, that can not address the larger issues related to the types of outcomes farmers and the general public demand and expect.  The breach of public trust is not merely in the delivery of agricultural services, it is in the formulation of the underlying policies.  We are facing not only defective means, but misguided ends.

 Most of us want food produced by family farmers who are financially secure on intergenerational farms.  Further, citizens believe that the ability of young farmers to make sustainable livings in agriculture is key to the long-term sustainability of our food system.

In contrast, young farmers are being pushed out at an unprecedented rate; the intergenerational family farm that has been the basis of food production in Ontario for over 250 years is disintegrating. 

The 1991 Census of Agriculture recorded 18,440 farmers in Ontario under the age of 35.  The 2006 Census recorded only 7,070—a drop of 62%!

This rate of decline among young farmers, if left unremedied, will lead Ontario family farms over a demographic cliff.  That OMAFRA policies should have driven tens-of-thousands of young farmers off their families' farms is perhaps the most telling, and damning, indicator of the vast divergence between the Ministry's policies and the expectations of Ontario citizens. 

 The NFU believes it is time to review where agricultural policy is taking us and to ask the basic question of whether or not government is truly acting in the interests of our farmers and other citizens.  The NFU believes OMAFRA is not and it is time for outside intervention.  It is our hope that the Ombudsman will take up our plea for action and that a report on what has happened might finally help to chart a course that leads to farm policy that actually works for family farmers.  If you believe this is an important step please contact the Ombudsman's office and register your support.
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Grant Robertson is a senior official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario and a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario.
 

Sending a clear message to Ontario’s politicians

A commentary for the National Farmers Union-Ontario

By Grant Robertson

 This will likely be considered a controversial commentary.  There will no doubt be accusations of partisan activity, or unfairly criticising fellow farm organizations.  Neither is remotely true, but that won’t stop the people and groups that will be embarrassed from trying to deflect from the real issues at hand.  You see you are not supposed to publicly talk about these dirty little secrets.

 Shortly after I became the Ontario Coordinator of the National Farmers Union I was forwarded a message from a Ministerial Policy Advisor by the outgoing Coordinator.  With both of us thinking it could be about a policy announcement I quickly returned the call.

The call was instead an invitation to a fundraiser in London for the Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Leona Dombrowsky.   Special guest to this fundraising event far from the Minister’s riding was Health Minister, George Smitherman.  It was explained, as participants in the Premier’s Summit on agriculture and an important farm organization, we would be given the opportunity to buy access to these politicians and support the Minister’s re-election for a mere $300 a person.  Those weren’t the exact words of course, but that sure seemed to be the essence of it all.  

 I was dumbfounded.  The whole thing was treated as if it was just business as usual.  Now it is true that I have a bit of the Boy Scout about me when it comes to these kinds of issues, but the casualness of it all was alarming.  This practice goes against the basic beliefs of the NFU on how farm policy development should take place.

 It is disturbing that a government minister would use her position in a way that is a clear conflict of interest.  The Minister must work with all farm organizations, yet an event like this certainly leaves the impression that paying your $300 gets your organization a fast track to the Minister’s ear.  How can any farm organization involved in this event criticize government with words but send out the message with cash that the government is doing a great job, so great a job that the organization is willing to support its re-election.  This situation is wrong on so many levels. 

 This is a thorny issue to raise publicly- we worry that the NFU will be penalized for speaking out. But it seemed the only course possible when the NFU further learned that, according to Elections Ontario figures, while many farmers were protesting the inaction of government in 2005 and 2006, political giving by some farm organizations, primarily to the government, was a regular pattern.  As recently as the downtown Toronto by-election in Parkdale-High Park a number of farm organizations gave away farmers’ money.  Farm organizations donating in that riding makes no sense, but it does suggest an ethical bankruptcy in the political system.

 Something is seriously wrong with a government system that encourages this kind of behaviour.  The problem is not farm organizations which, like far too many other groups, seem to feel compelled to use questionable means to influence government.  The NFU believes the Premier needs to send a clear message to Ontario’s politicians that this kind of unethical behaviour will no longer be tolerated in a modern Ontario.  Farmers are losing confidence in government to act on their behalf.  Whispers of these types of events make that worse. If Ontarians are going to enjoy the best public policy it cannot appear to be guided by who decides to pony up some re-election cash.

Grant Robertson is a senior official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario and a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario.

Must reads for Canada's policy makers.

A commentary by the National Farmers Union-Ontario

By Grant Robertson

For several weeks I have been reading two books-The End of Food:  How The Food Industry Is Destroying Our Food Supply - And What You Can Do About It by Thomas F. Pawlick and Pandemoniun:  Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease, and Other Biological Plagues of the 21rst Century by Andrew Nikiforuk.  A third piece of writing intruded into my reading.  CTV.ca featured a news story from the Canadian Press entitled U.S. legislators target Canadian food imports.

Taken together the three make the case for developing a more local, domestic food system rather the 'export or bust' model government and agri-business keep promoting.  Exports are always going to be important to Canadian farmers; however, the question remains as to why we continue to export primary food stuffs, rather than doing further processing in Canada and creating Canadian jobs.

Nikiforuk details in Pandemonium, to a 'scare the willies out of you' degree, that one of the outcomes of our current globalized trade system is the creation of very quick pathways for insects, plants, bacteria and viruses to travel the world.  They end up colonizing too quickly for the local biosphere to develop resistance.  In fact the news is becoming filled with stories about invasions like the Emerald Ash Borer beetle, Garlic Mustard, Avian Influenza, and so on.  The question is not if there will be another outbreak, or even when, we are in the midst of several right now, it is what will be the long term consequences of the changes to local environments.  The impact of globalization of species,  is already happening according to Nikiforuk. The only real question is - are we prepared to deal with the scope of a major outbreak.

In the End of Food Pawlick writes about how it all started for him with some tomatoes.  By tracing the way tomatoes are grown and exported, Pawlick demonstrates, often using government's own data, that we are experiencing a decline in taste, nutrition and diversity in our food.  Tomatoes are now bred for a large, industrialized export market for toughness during transport, with little consideration for anything else.  Moving tomatoes around the globe takes a pretty tough character so tomatoes are bred to be tough, picked green and then gassed with ethylene for redness when they reach your grocery shelf.  Something unnecessary with Ontario hothouse tomatoes, by the way.  Pawlick goes well beyond tomatoes in pointing out the growing and alarming decline of the nutritional value of our food. Our current food system does not consider nutritional value as an important attribute.  It considers the money.

The final piece from the Canadian Press details how there is a growing movement for closing borders and mandatory origin labelling in the United States, including in Congress.   Apparently the growing food safety announcements and the revelation that the toxic chemical melamine suspected in pet food deaths has routinely been added as filler for feed for pigs, farmed fish, chickens and others in the USA has created an even greater protectionist mood there.  US legislators are prepared to make food a political issue.  The first place the Americans will look as food becomes more politicized is to exports. 

Canada has lost, and is continuing to feel pressure on our own domestic markets.  Government and agri-business have put Canadian farmers in the race to the bottom and our food quality and farmers are suffering.  We are paying huge costs in our local environment for the sake of short term dividends to investors in trans-national companies, and the moment a problem appears borders have the potential to be shut tight.  And it appears that governments in Canada do not even recognize the problems, let alone working on ways to mitigate the issues.

Grant Robertson is a senior official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario and a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario.

In the latter days of the Soviet Union, officials used to serve free vodka in the polling stations to encourage people to vote.  It might have encouraged turnout slightly, but it did nothing to address the broken electoral process that was the root of voter cynicism and apathy.

Pass the vodka, Stephen. 

This has been part of a host of half-measures at democratic reform that the Conservatives have unveiled over the last year: Fixed election dates, term limits for Senators, requiring photo ID at the polls.  The individual merits of each are debatable.  Personally I think Senators should serve eleven years, and I wonder if voter fraud is really pervasive and coordinated enough to justify making it more difficult for people to cast their vote.  But this is sidebar.
The tinkerings of the Conservatives amount to irrelevant attempts to say they did something on the democratic reform file without attacking the heart of Canada's problems.  We need a system of proportional representation.  We need to close loopholes in election financing laws that permit massive private loans to make a mockery of election spending limits.

There's nothing particularly objectionable to a second day of voting, except that it is taking the place of a meaningful, comprehensive overhaul of an archaic voting process.  Opening the store longer won't help if nobody wants to buy what you're selling.

After years of inaction and empty rhetoric on climate change from the Liberals, the Conservatives came to power and released a laughably useless new plan.  The NDP led the initiative to re-write the Clean Air Act, while the Liberals fought them every step of the way and then tried to take credit for it when the deed was done.

The Conservatives then buried the re-written Act in favor of a New Plan, which is as laughably useless as their old New Plan.

And all the while our political leaders call eachother names and try to outdo eachother with the most hyperbolic stretched analogy possible to describe their mutual, all-encompassing failure to address our greenhouse gas emissions, Denmark has been showing the world how it's supposed to be done since 1973.

Any Canadian who thinks we are a progressive country ought to be ashamed and embarrassed by the complete lack of action on environmental issues over the last decade.  We have let successive governments hoodwink us into believing they had our interests and international cooperation at heart.  That's proven to be a monumental lie, and it is only coming to light now because we have a government that we don't assume shares our values.

Is a little ethanol in our wine really all we need?

A commentary for the National Farmers Union-Ontario

By Grant Robertson

Around the early 90s I began running my car on ethanol blended fuel.  By the late 80s I was already deeply concerned about global warming and environmental damage.  Ethanol was sold as a more sustainable way to produce liquid fuel.  I also liked the thought of a new market for farmers.  In short, as a 20 something, I was a strong proponent of ethanol- willing to pay a premium for the good I thought I was doing.

As I aged a few things happened, one was an alarming thinning of my hairline; another was a more complete understanding of ethanol.  I am happy to see some rebounding in corn prices.  I worry though that since this growth is heavily subsidized by ethanol incentives and the US Farm Bill it may be short lived and have few real long term benefits for Canada's farmers.  Another possible outcome is merely the transfer of pain to other farm sectors, or a greater entrenching of the marketplace power of a few agri-business entities.

There is a growing body of evidence from credible sources that ethanol may not be all its cracked up to be.   Even accepting the most optimistic calculations, much of our bio-fuel and ethanol production will need to be used to produce more fuel, not food.  Some studies have suggested that even if we turned the planet's entire corn and wheat crop into ethanol it would only cover about a third of the world's gasoline needs.  And that's assuming the most optimistic projections for energy gained from energy input ratios.

Exhaust fumes from ethanol blended fuels have been shown to be about the same in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It is not hard to figure out who would win a bidding war between a wealthy New York Hummer driver and an impoverished Nigerian AIDS orphan. Even using cellulose ethanol (made from straw and other so-called waste products) may have a negative effect.  Often these portions of the plant are spread back onto the land to replace depleted nutrients.  If they are removed for fuel production there may need to be increased use of petroleum based chemical fertilizers (controlled by many of the pro-ethanol agri-business operations). 

It is not as if ethanol is all bad, but given the increasingly large amount of taxpayers dollars going to its production, at the potential expense of other technologies, a hard look is necessary.

 Politicians like to point at shiny things to make us voters think they are on the job.  Actual effectiveness isn't nearly as important as appearing to take action.  These leaders seem to be suggesting that we can continue on just fine, with no real changes needed, as long as we add a little ethanol to our wine.

We are facing some very serious environmental issues.  It is time for some real action.  Why can I only buy a hybrid vehicle, or a really fuel efficient one in small sizes that don't work for families and/or are overly expensive?  Why not a hybrid mini-van?  In 2007 why isn't solar technology advanced enough that I could power my home and barn, and potentially recharge a vehicle, from a near zero emission source?  The same goes for personal use wind power. 

Global warming and our degraded environment are real. The farm income crisis is real.  The looming demographic crisis in primary food production is real.  Our over dependence on oil is real and so is the depleting supply.  The need to return to a more local food and economic system is real.  It is time for government to get real and get on with real solutions. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Grant Robertson is a senior official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario and a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario.