Welcome to Day Three of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union strike. "Do we look like union picketers to you?" asks Michael Chapman, president of OPSEU local 518 who, ironically, is working on the ministry's long-delayed move to Guelph.
"Close the line!" he shouts as yet another "scab", coffee and muffin in hand, tries to get in so he can keep up with his mortgage payments. "Once a scab, always a scab," Chapman mutters as he takes down the name. Fifteen today, 20 yesterday. "These people are our friends," he says.
Long-standing working relationships, broken forever. OMAFRA employees did not have their hearts in this strike. Many come from quiet farms and rural communities, not your radical Cesar Chavez types. All have mortgages to pay, kids to feed. Many, like Chapman, have a spouse also on strike.
At Ridgetown college, 43 per cent of OPSEU employees broke the picket lines on the first two days. Union brass sent down workers from Correctional Services in Chatham to stiffen the resolve. Nevertheless, cows still had to be fed, and weed researchers were handed the slop bucket to do the chores.
Out on the concessions, farmers were a bit nonplussed by the whole affair. Meetings were moved from the agriculture office to the church basement. Rabbit, duck and specialty meat producers felt the pinch, as provincial meat inspectors walked out.
But things will never be the same again for farmers or the ministry. The premier is determined to wipe out the deficit, and has asked for a $200-million donation from agriculture. Something will have to give, whether it's the farm tax rebate, farm programs or bureaucrat jobs. And the union knows it. Pathetically, OPSEU's chief demand, according to Chapman, "boils down to a more decent buyout package. Let us leave with some dignity."
So colossal is the debt that even putting each of Ontario's 80,000 civil servants on the dole would cut only one-quarter out of total provincial spending. And even if Premier Harris can wipe the annual deficit out by the year 2000, there's still the $100-billion debt.
It's all very well for politicians and top bureaucrats to travel the province like motivational speakers, pleading for ideas, and flashing overhead transparencies of bar charts and pie charts showing the mess we're in. But farm leaders, politicians and bureaucrats in Ontario are going to have to come up with some constructive solutions. It may mean substituting people with computers. Are 20 paid 4-H secretaries needed throughout the province, for instance? It may mean farmers administering their own safety net programs. Yes, agriculture may have been cut more than health, but in the long run farmers would trade a legion of crop insurance bureaucrats for one life-saving ambulance coming down the farm drive in an emergency.
We can rejuvenate this great province, and build on all the blessings we already have: hospitals, schools, safe communities, and cheap, nutritious food.
I smell a lawyer
It is no secret who is pulling the strings behind the
so-called 'farmer-driven' property rights movement. Developers
and lobbyists and lawyers are in a battle against social
pressures to protect farmland from extinction. Today,
developers mobilize farmers to reduce regulations. Tomorrow,
they use those reduced regulations to lock up farmers' land
for their own uses.
Farmers will be tricked again if we do not recognize who is
manipulating and advising us. Our legitimate concerns are
being twisted and used to promote someone else's agenda.
Paul Kurelek
Vinemount
No to freebie trees
As a nurseryman, I find it disturbing and frustrating to see
daily headlines about disappearing hospital beds, cutbacks to
education and growing fears about child poverty. The
provincial government must make significant cuts to its
spending, but it has clearly not done its homework when it
comes to reducing the deficit while doing the least damage to
the social fabric of Ontario.
The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has been growing
seedling trees and giving them away, or selling them at a
dramatic discount, since the beginning of the century. It is
costing taxpayers at least $1.10 per tree to support MNR's
program, providing 20 to 35 million trees annually for
southern Ontario.
In addition, several levels of government have been funding
the conservation authorities (CAs) to carry on direct
competition with the private sector. Landscaping golf courses,
city streets and residential driveways have all been carried
out by the authorities.
Farmers know trees not only reduce soil erosion, making farms
more productive, but they add to the value of their farms.
Trees are an investment, not an expense which has to be
subsidized and then buried in the overall debt of the
province.
All trees destined for private land should be grown by private
nurseries, and the mandate of the CAs should be restricted to
flood control and protection of provincially significant land,
assuming a suitable definition is reached.
Recreation is another field in which CAs are funded to compete
directly with private operators. The local campground operator
is offering a scenic atmosphere, swimming, trail rides and a
host of other value-added services, but has to compete against
the public purse. Why are we funding CAs to operate ski hills
on the Niagara Escarpment?
Even within the realm of protecting provincially significant
natural areas, one must question the wisdom of supporting the
CAs to purchase property, however fragile. The National Cover
Program protected fragile lands at a fraction of what purchase
by CAs would cost. The purchase of the Morris Tract area by
the Nature Conservancy shows there are well-established
private conservation groups which can purchase property when
it is deemed to be an environmental priority. Ducks Unlimited
is another such group.
When CAs claim they must sell land because they are unable to
pay the taxes, that land should be given back to the crown and
left in its natural state for the public to enjoy.
It is rare in these troubled times to identify a relatively
straightforward policy which, if adopted, would benefit the
government, the tax payer and private enterprise. This is such
a case.
John Drummond
Mitchell
Rats!
As a farmer and avid reader of Farm & Country, I must object
strongly to some ads in past editions.
Rats and mice are a known fact on our farms and their
populations must be maintained but we do not need to see
life-sized ads of them.
We receive various farm papers but they don't carry these
disgusting ads. I would prefer to enjoy my rare coffee break
without sharing it with rodents that should be outside.
Linda Armstrong
Rainy River district
Insurance premiums fall. The Ontario crop insurance Commission
will lower premiums for 29 of its 50 insurance plans offered
for 1996. The commission cites three consecutive excellent
growing seasons and lower claim numbers. Premiums will remain
the same for 19 crops, but two crops will increase.
Commodities with cheaper premiums include: seed corn, down 20
per cent; soybeans, 19 per cent; processing tomatoes, 18 per
cent; coloured beans, 17 per cent; corn, 15 per cent. Farmers
who were insured in 1995 will have their coverage renewed at
the same level for 1996 unless they inform the commission by
April 1 that they no longer require coverage. May 1 is the
deadline for changing the level of coverage on crops insured
last year, insuring additional crops, or new applications. For
more information, contact your district co-ordinator, or call
the Crop Insurance Commission at (416) 326-3276.
Gift that keeps giving. The Clarke family of Blenheim is
donating $200,000 to fund a new scholarship at the University
of Guelph. Paul and Eileen Clarke and their five children,
Janis, Paul and Julie of London and Jon and Greg of Toronto,
are donating the proceeds of the sale of the family farm,
which none of the children was interested in taking over, as
a way of passing on the family's farming heritage. The P.A.J.
Clarke Family Award will provide $2,500 per year for four
years to an undergraduate, with preference given to those from
Blenheim district and Kent county who were raised or worked on
a farm.
Mother always said to eat the crust. If only we had listened.
Ontario Farm and Country Accommodations, which promotes farm
vacations, reports good results from last year's in-store
promotion in co-operation with the fruit and vegetable
industry, with both farm vacations and horticulture getting
good exposure. Grocery shoppers could tear off farm vacation
brochure forms at the point of purchase. Winning coupons for
free farm vacations were inside the clear apple bags.
Unfortunately, the bakery promotion in 1994 wasn't as
successful, and 20 free weekend packages for a family of four
went unclaimed. It seems winning coupons were inserted at the
end of the bread bag - and no one got past the last crust.
A downtown office building is simple enough, but if you're the
Ontario Public Service Employees Union, how do you seal off a
farm?
That was the challenge facing union brass at Ridgetown college
in the early days of the OPSEU strike. As well as a college,
Ridgetown is a working farm with livestock, making it
virtually impossible to cordon off effectively.
According to one strike breaker, getting to work unnoticed was
fairly simple, and almost half of OPSEU employees did just
that on the first couple of days, coming to work in the early
hours, and leaving after strikers had gone home.
At press time, however, OPSEU organizers planned 24-hour
pickets, with picketers sent over from Correctional Services
in Chatham, including one burly gentleman carrying a stick.
"It's a learning experience," said the insider.
There's been much ado about newts in Britain. So far, moving
30,000 newts 300 metres has cost a British developer £750,000
($1.5 million). By the time the job is complete, an additional
$1.5 million will be spent moving the six-inch reptiles
individually by hand, working out to approximately $90 per
newt.
Britain's rapidly-growing population, estimated at 4.4 million
new households over the next 20 years, needs new places to
live, but this growth is bound to create clashes between
developers and the environmentally vigilant.
The latest demonstrations are against the export of veal
calves and the building of a new highway by-pass. Highway
construction has been hindered by sometimes violent clashes
between developers and environmentalists.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien must be wondering whether it's
possible for Canadians to be united on any issue.
Now Canadians can't even agree on the GST. With little money
in federal coffers to spend his way into the the hearts and
minds of voters, Chretien in his throne speech last month
trotted out a key Red Book promise to throw out the GST.
The following day, delegates at the Ontario Corn Producers
Association (OCPA) annual meeting overwhelmingly passed a
resolution calling on Ottawa to do exactly the opposite.
The resolution even broke ranks with OCPA policy as outlined
by incoming president Bob Down. "OCPA is supportive of
intentions to integrate the provincial sales tax with the
federal goods and services tax," Down told the meeting.
The OCPA said in a recent letter to provincial Finance
Minister Ernie Eves that the zero-rating of farm inputs
allowed under the GST must be extended in full to the PST.
With the GST earning $17 billion, the Liberal plan is to roll
the GST into the sticker price of goods and services, instead
of adding it on top as it is done now. In other words, Ottawa
still wants the $17 billion. Mother always said to eat the
crust. If only we had listened.
Ontario Farm and Country Accommodations, which promotes farm
vacations, reports good results from last year's in-store
promotion in co-operation with the fruit and vegetable
industry, with both farm vacations and horticulture getting
good exposure. Grocery shoppers could tear off farm vacation
brochure forms at the point of purchase. Winning coupons for
free farm vacations were inside the clear apple bags.
Unfortunately, the bakery promotion in 1994 wasn't as
successful, and 20 free weekend packages for a family of four
went unclaimed. It seems winning coupons were inserted at the
end of the bread bag - and no one got past the last crust.
A downtown office building is simple enough, but if you're the
Ontario Public Service Employees Union, how do you seal off a
farm?
That was the challenge facing union brass at Ridgetown college
in the early days of the OPSEU strike. As well as a college,
Ridgetown is a working farm with livestock, making it
virtually impossible to cordon off effectively.
According to one strike breaker, getting to work unnoticed was
fairly simple, and almost half of OPSEU employees did just
that on the first couple of days, coming to work in the early
hours, and leaving after strikers had gone home.
At press time, however, OPSEU organizers planned 24-hour
pickets, with picketers sent over from Correctional Services
in Chatham, including one burly gentleman carrying a stick.
"It's a learning experience," said the insider.
There's been much ado about newts in Britain. So far, moving
30,000 newts 300 metres has cost a British developer £750,000
($1.5 million). By the time the job is complete, an additional
$1.5 million will be spent moving the six-inch reptiles
individually by hand, working out to approximately $90 per
newt.
Britain's rapidly-growing population, estimated at 4.4 million
new households over the next 20 years, needs new places to
live, but this growth is bound to create clashes between
developers and the environmentally vigilant.
The latest demonstrations are against the export of veal
calves and the building of a new highway by-pass. Highway
construction has been hindered by sometimes violent clashes
between developers and environmentalists.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien must be wondering whether it's
possible for Canadians to be united on any issue.
Now Canadians can't even agree on the GST. With little money
in federal coffers to spend his way into the the hearts and
minds of voters, Chretien in his throne speech last month
trotted out a key Red Book promise to throw out the GST.
The following day, delegates at the Ontario Corn Producers
Association (OCPA) annual meeting overwhelmingly passed a
resolution calling on Ottawa to do exactly the opposite.
The resolution even broke ranks with OCPA policy as outlined
by incoming president Bob Down. "OCPA is supportive of
intentions to integrate the provincial sales tax with the
federal goods and services tax," Down told the meeting.
The OCPA said in a recent letter to provincial Finance
Minister Ernie Eves that the zero-rating of farm inputs
allowed under the GST must be extended in full to the PST.
With the GST earning $17 billion, the Liberal plan is to roll
the GST into the sticker price of goods and services, instead
of adding it on top as it is done now. In other words, Ottawa
still wants the $17 billion.