by SUSAN MANN
Ontario’s agriculture ministry doesn’t have any plans to amend the Drainage Act despite a recommendation to do so in this year’s Environmental Commissioner’s annual report.
Agriculture ministry spokesperson Sarah Petrevan says all drainage projects are reviewed to ensure compliance with federal and provincial environmental laws before they’re approved. In addition, Ontario is always reviewing its laws to ensure they’re current.
But there aren’t plans currently to amend the Drainage Act, she says, noting they haven’t ruled out a future review of the Act if a situation arose that warranted it.
Commissioner Gord Miller recommended the ministry amend the Act and its policies to ensure provincially significant wetlands are protected from being drained. Seventy-two per cent of Southern Ontario’s pre-settlement wetlands have been lost through agricultural drainage, development, encroachment, land clearing and filling, it says in the report, released Sept. 22.
Petrevan says the ministry doesn’t support the draining of provincially significant wetlands. It’s the natural resources ministry that’s responsible for designating wetlands as provincially significant.
The agriculture ministry takes recommendations from the Environmental Commissioner very seriously and it has to respond to them but not necessarily adopt them, she explains. “They (the recommendations) are not necessarily prescriptive.”
Spokespeople for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and National Farmers Union (Ontario branch) say they’re still wading through the report. The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario couldn’t be reached for comment.
Federation president Bette Jean Crews says from what she’s read so far there’s no balance “with society’s need to eat” in the commissioner’s report on environmental initiatives. The report gives the impression current mitigation measures aren’t sufficient, she notes.
Also, the report doesn’t acknowledge that a lot a work has been accomplished by farm organizations, the agriculture and natural resources ministries and others to ensure farm businesses have a minimal impact on the environment.
About drainage, Crews says it’s needed so some lands, particularly in Western Ontario, can even be farmed. “It was the farmers who dug those drains in the first place.”
The Federation established a task team to study drainage matters across Ontario. “What we find is the regulations conflict between the (federal) Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the conservation authorities and the (Ontario) Ministry of Natural Resources,” Crews says, adding the provincial environment ministry and the Environmental Commissioner are also involved.
The Commissioner also recommended the agriculture and environment ministries develop guidelines for biochar production and use in Ontario.
Petrevan says the agriculture ministry is involved in some biochar research. Biochar is a complex substance that can be used to sequester carbon and as a soil amendment. The ministry is looking at developing significantly more Ontario-based data before it brings in a biochar policy.
Crews says the science isn’t complete. “Our concern is that they (the agriculture ministry) would put a lot of research dollars into this when there are conflicting studies already done.”
Crews says the studies are conflicting as to the effectiveness of biochar.
Sean McGivern, National Farmers Union Ontario coordinator, says the ministry should definitely put some resources into studying biochar. “I think we’re running out of finite resource supplies” and products made from renewable resources need to seriously be studied. BF
Comments
No plans to change drainage laws? Mitchell is on perilous grounds and does not want to do anything to provoke any electorate before the election.
If there are no plans to change the laws, why is it even mentioned?
Something not stirring the Kool_aid right.
Greenbelt Oakridges Morraine and now head waters proposals (critical of most agricultural drainage)as part of the submissions to the Provincial Policy Statement (places to grow) are also part of the Planning Act and under the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Does this not provide and establish the MMAH minister with super minister powers as many other ministries comment on, or report to MMAH? ie Mining, agriculture, transportation, MNR to name a few? There seems to be no appeal process for ministers, their file, or those affected landowners left with no compensation. Do the "one window" decisions and policies which impact other Ministers become influenced or silenced to a MMAH predetermined end and if so by what weight are they decided on?
In a second example Ontario reviews its drainage laws to ensure they’re current. All projects are reviewed to ensure compliance with federal and provincial environmental laws before they’re approved. It was the farmers who established drains in the first place but several studies show inconstancies in drainage matters across Ontario. The regulations conflict between the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the conservation authorities and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Studies also conflict as to the effectiveness of biochar.
Third example
Biochar Ontario, yet another self-anointed NGO aspires to be the lead promoter and facilitator for all aspects of research, application, and dissemination of information relating to biochar. http://groups.google.com/group/biochar-ontario
They are active in the following areas Research Investment Advocacy, Commercial Deployment Advocacy, Regulatory and Public Policy Advocacy, Education and Awareness
The mission of Biochar Ontario is to promote biochar as a vehicle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve soil fertility, and enhance food security by advocating research, development and commercialization of biochar.
Nothing indicating agricultural expertise or representing a vested interest in land. There does not appear to be a business plan of the income stream or how it relates or flows to the landowner. No landowner is going to spend money to get a percentage contribution or future tax relief in kind for a non income stream investment.
It certainly becomes clear that agriculture and its minister have become a secondary commenting agency.
Various NGO’s and some ministries have elevated themselves to super power agencies with willing self appointed henchmen. Their download burden on agriculture is both unproven science and an economic tax to be paid by the minority land owners. This download tax is not reflective of, or compensated by, any cost correlation to agriculture, lost productivity, increased environmental cost and or societal benefit.
It is simply compensation in reverse. Agriculture and landowners compensation become payment for the whims and wishes of self- appointed environmentalists often operating with full governmental funding and no inclusion of the landowner with a true vested interest. Agriculture is compensating society with cheap food while prostituting ourselves with environmental favours of economic loss.
In the absence of an agricultural minister considering our interests, the gestation of government funded surrogate NGO’s is getting shorter all the time.
Commissioner Gord Miller recommended the ministry amend the Act and its policies to ensure provincially significant wetlands are protected from being drained. Nowhere have more wet lands been lost than through drainage, encroachment, land clearing and filling, and surface restructuring of grades of development land. No mention of the accelerated hard surface runoff or oil and road-salt contaminants
Petrevan says the ministry doesn’t support the draining of provincially significant wetlands but once draft plan development has been approved there is no limit to the topography restructuring that can occur creating maximum density which is an objective of development to curtail urban sprawl. It’s the natural resources ministry that’s responsible for designating wetlands as provincially significant but once development is in the mix all he seems to do is lay the blame game for loss of minor wetland on agriculture for land that will never be farmed again. Who says it is more correct to maintain the balance of wet land from the inventory of (food land) agricultural tillable land lost to development?
The agriculture ministry takes recommendations from the Environmental Commissioner seriously and has to respond to them but not necessarily adopt them. Environmental Commissioner recommendations are not necessarily prescriptive but if they are not adopted everything there after is blamed on agriculture. The environmental commissioner and the environmental minister do seem to act as super ministers as long as their percentages of wet land are freely compensated by private agricultural land.
Without clear rules and protocols the "who dun it” game has far too much influence and potential for corruption by environmentalist, planners, developers, and the political approval ministers to bend rules for development and lay the adverse negative wildlife or drainage outcomes on agriculture and its associated private food production land.
Some farmers in the farm magazine stories set back brag about their largeness of scale and yields while most farmers try to make ends meet and survive.The press puts fuel on the fire that farm land prices are on the rise in 2010
The human nature of politics and civil servants with perks are destroying any chance of a return to honest Agricultural governess, ( IF IT EVER DID EXIST)with hugh farm debt burden.The world economic crisis of 2008-9 will sooner or later bring in high interest rates that will cause farming to be completly at high economic risk for non supply management farmers. Only then will the farmers blood boil and they demand farmleaders,government and omafra be judged, poorly managed, self serving, criminal with usary of the farming public. Then farmers will cry for debt relief and the cycle starts again
Get ready for a good ride! What will the average of farmers be after this economic correction?
Thank goodness the drainage systems were started in the early 1900s because today they would be cost prohibative to start let alone mantain in a proper fashion. Common sense has been thrown out is the babies bath water and replaced with party politics/ political correctness with feuds, scandal or what ever slowing useful beneficial positive progress. Agricultural production will contiue for Canadaaaaaaaaans, but what an unfortune situation for most of the non supply management farmers. Unless interest rates go to 10 percent and cause an economic hardship and scandal of government mismanagement of agriculture and farming , it will be business as usual,
There will be continuation of constant economic pressures and no lasting solutions as witnessed by past decade performance of OMAFRA,OFA,GFO, NFU, and farmers. The good news is there will be fewer farmers that can be `successful or have wasted farm families life time in the profession of farming under OMAFRA mandate
Farmers need to give their heads a shake as to the situation of what farming is changing into for better or worse. Is it possible farmers are highly leveraged with hugh short and long term debt or is a new plateau of higher equity listings being constructed to keep the ship going?
GET R DONE
What's always ignored in these debates is the cause of the wetlands. Not all wetlands are created equal. The majority of "wetlands" in eastern Ontario, for example, are the direct result of beaver dams and are, in the words of a conservation authority biologist, "beaver swamps". The lack of predation and resulting overpopulation of beavers is rarely mentioned and certainly not being addressed. The bigger picture is being ignored when the entire ecosystem is not considered. How "natural" is an area with an unbalanced ecosystem?
Post new comment