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CREEK Submission
Government of Canada All-Party
Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food (SCAAF)
Napanee - March 12, 2002
By Don Chisholm
Media Spokesperson CREEK (County Regional
Environmental Evaluation Ko-alition)
Across Canada rural folks are forming organizations to help
protect themselves from the result of industrialization of farmlands.
Prince Edward's CREEK (County Regional Environmental Evaluation
Ko-alition) was spawned when the local environment was seriously
degraded by the establishment of an ILO (Intensive Livestock
Operation) in the Cressy area.
The quality of air, surface water and deep ground water are
threatened by these industries that operate under the same
legislation as "normal" farms. But these factories are not "normal"
farms. They require large tracts of land eliminating many family
farmers, thereby weakening the spirit of the rural community. The
barns are mostly automated requiring only one or two workers on a
day-to-day basis thereby reducing the tax base of the community.
Fleets of heavy trucks are brought in from time to time, summer or
winter, to empty the manure pit, spreading it on the land and leaving
roads muddied and broken for local taxpayers to deal with. Many of
these factories use antibiotics in feed on a regular basis leading to
the super bugs we now hear about that have become resistant to
modern medicine.
Why then are these operations developing? Because of many
factors. One of these, of course is human population growth. But
mainly it is our Federal Government's endorsement of and capitulation
to:
- corporate driven globalisation;
- bilateral trade agreements;
or the only success/failure measurement tool available to our
federal and provincial governments -- GDP and trade balances -- but
not environmental costs.
And these governments set the rules for trade and they establish
marketing boards that historically give advantage to high volume
agriculture operations, pushing the small farmer to either sell out
or automate and expand in order to increase protein throughput.
But do farmers welcome this push by our governments? NO, says a
recent survey of the Christian Farmers Federation who surveyed about
Ontario 300 farmers wherein 68% indicated they resent being forced to
change their lifestyle.
Yet almost every week there is some article in the local papers
indicating our Federal Agricultural Minister wants Canada to be
number producer and exporter of cheap food. Canada now marches to
the drum of globalization and the rules handed down by IMF, WTO,
NAFTA, and the lobbying power of multinational Agra-corporations.
These forces now drive Canada's tractors and forcing national
governments to compete with each other they in turn force farmers
to compete.
The slippery slop that our Federal government pursues is well
document by many eminent Canadians who describe how the forces of
globalization is etching away years of progress in civil freedoms
and individual well being. These losses to the well-being of
citizens range from the agricultural issues raised above to the
privatisation of all communal systems that we have taken for granted,
such as Medicare or Ontario Hydro. These eminent Canadians have
written some very good books that tell the story. In some of these
the title conveys the message:
- The Cancerous State of Capitalism, by John McMurtry,
philosophy University of Guelph (son of Roy McMurtry, our Chief
Justice), or;
- STOP Think, or Goodbye Canada, by the Honorable Paul
Helyer (former Liberal Cabinet Minster), or;
- The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul
husband of our governor general, or;
- The Globalization of Poverty, by the University of
Ottawa's Michel Chossudovsky.
Marquette Thatcher coined "TINA", There Is NO Alternative,
to globalisation and privatisation of every public serviced that is
not nailed down. But there IS an alternative, as spelled out by an
organization called the Simultaneous Policy Organization (ISPO), I
may leave some brochures on this.
Thank you for your time.
Yours truly,
Don Chisholm,
on behalf of
CREEK
http://www.safewatergroup.org/CREEKWebSite/CREEKMain.htm
And for ISPO http://www.simpol.com
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