I hope that you are enjoying the mild winter, less snow to push, less wood to cut, cheap gas and diesel. One has to love climate change. Enough about the good things. The Ontario Government has appointed a new environmental commissioner by the name of Dianne Saxe to replace Gord Miller who had been on the job for the past 15 years. She is an environmental lawyer who has practised for 40 years and according to an article in the National Post by David Reevely, she stated that she had a “mad passion for trees and a love for any place you could put a paddle”.
Now I love trees and rivers and lakes, but somehow I don’t think my passion for them is as all-consuming as hers seems to be. Only a few weeks into the job, she went to the Climate talks in Paris to join with the Trudeau entourage. Now she is back and all inspired and the first thing in her sights is the ‘coloured diesel fuel’ used by farmers and off-road construction machinery. She wants to remove the subsidy on coloured diesel fuel. She claims that this is a subsidy that mostly goes to big companies that should be taking steps to reduce their diesel fuel use.
So first of all, this is NOT a subsidy! The fuel tax on diesel is a road tax to help pay for the maintenance of roads. All other taxes on diesel are still paid by farmers and construction companies. Tractors, combines and construction equipment, spend very little time on the roads which is why they are not expected to pay for their maintenance. Farmers now work a high percentage of their cultivated land by no-till methods to reduce erosion, time and fuel costs so how could they be expected to develop further efficiencies towards reducing the amount of diesel they use. Obviously, people, Ms. Saxe will only be happy when we use no fuel.
Now all this at a time when the dollar dips below 60 cents (US) and the cost of imported food is sky-rocketing. Suddenly $7.00 broccoli heads start to show us how dependent we have become on food imports and how inept we are at supplying our citizens with home-grown food. This is the result of all governments allowing large multi-nationals to buy up our processing, canning and slaughter plants and then moving them out of the country. Some of these were the result of overpriced electrical power forcing companies to move to the U.S. where power is ¼ of our price as we subsidize them with our excess power at a fraction of the cost of production. That is a true and real subsidy that takes money out of everyone’s pocket and gives it to our neighbours so they can take over our industries that we rely on in this country. Without them, we cannot remain self-sustaining with our own reliable food sourced here in Ontario.
Sadly, all parties in the legislature saw fit to endorse this woman, whose agenda is obviously to further destroy the rural economy and our food security.