Is There Hope for Rural Ontario? by Tom Black
Tom Black
It’s been 15 years since Marlene and I joined the landowner movement in Ontario. It is hard to believe how fast the years have gone by. We started out trying to raise attention for farmers who had lost most of their income because of the Mad Cow outbreak. Then we heard from people having problems with the MNR, the OSPCA, the Conservation Authorities and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who had no one to turn to for help.
We have just come through the worst 15 years of government aggression against property owners in the history of the province. The McGuinty/Wynne dynasty has virtually wiped out property rights in favour of control by the masses. All control of property is on the agenda of the dominant socialist movement of the NDP and Liberal governments. This agenda has been fulfilled by the creeping provincial policies that encourage planners, building inspectors, conservation authorities, and local governments to shut down rural Ontario and force it to comply with the plan set out by the big city government.
Toronto now has a population of 2.6 million people, but if you include the greater Toronto area with Mississauga, Scarborough and Etobicoke, that number comes to 4.1 million people. That is equal to the population of Alberta. Only 3 provinces have a population greater than 4.1 million. That leaves six provinces and three territories with fewer people than Toronto. Manitoba is the largest of these with 1.2 million people. Under the McGuinty/Wynne dynasty, Toronto has used the rest of Ontario to finance the crumbling infrastructure of the massively expanding major cities in Ontario where most of the Liberal votes come from.
The greater Toronto area and Ottawa, the physically largest city in North America, have been heavily subsidized for roads, sewers and transit by the rest of the province, who do not even have bus service, no high-speed service or natural gas hook-ups. On top of this lopsided double-standard of service from our government, we are saddled with regulations hoisted upon us by the kooks and loonie-toons that can organize a lobby group to convince the uninformed city oriented social liberal democrats who willingly sign their names to the legislation to retain the power that these lobby groups grant them.
The result is a rural Ontario that has been stripped of its services, schools, and infrastructure. It has been crushed by red tape that allows no entrepreneurship and leaves most businesses and family farms encumbered by mountains of paper as they try to make a living.
It seems to me that it is time to petition the federal government to grant the rest of Ontario a severance from Toronto. Let’s make it a stand-alone district like Washington. D.C. Let’s let the people of Toronto make decisions about their own lives and let the rest of us be governed by a new parliament situated somewhere like Alliston or Shelbourne. In the meantime, let us hope that Mr. Ford can help unwind some of the red tape that has virtually destroyed rural Ontario.
