Greenbelt vassals pay tithe to Liberal Lord Bradley

Below: visitors tour the peach orchard at Nokara Farms, on Lakeshore Rd. in St. Catharines, May 4, 2008.
Below, Joe Ferretti talks to visitors. A sign behind reads 'Good things used to grow, in Ontario'.
Below: a view of the crowd from Lakeshore Rd., gathered in front of the barn at Nokara Farms. About a hundred people attended two farm tours given that day.

I wonder if St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has any comments regarding the May 3, 2008 story in the St. Catharines Standard, “Where do we grow from here?”

I didn’t see Bradley at Joe and Kathryn Ferretti’s May 4, 2008 public tour of Nokara Farms to view the acres of peach orchard, now in bloom, which the Ferrettis will be forced to pull out due to the CanGro plant closure.

Bradley hasn’t publicly explained how his “greenbelt” “helped” Nokara Farms … to bulldoze their own orchards!

Remember when good ole Greenbelt Bradley was smugly fear mongering that “The Tories can't wait to get the bulldozers revved up and start plowing this land." (St. Catharines Standard, Oct.19, 2005)?

Well, it is Liberal MPP Jim Bradley who is driving the bulldozers today, on farms right in Niagara; right in his own riding!

Remember good ole Greenbelt Bradley, bragging how his greenbelt would 'save the cucumber trees'?

 

I guess saving peach trees – or the farmers that invest, grow, and tend them – aren’t on Bradley’s priority list these days.

Maybe Bradley can run and hide from the CanGro closing by deferring it to Kim Craitor, because the plant is/was in Craitor’s riding.

Maybe Bradley can activate his magical cloaking device and vanish from view when it comes to respond to the Duffins, because they’re fruit farmers from Pelham. (They recently said Bradley’s Liberals “walked away” from the table when the Duffins were trying to save CanGro)

But Nokara Farms is in St. Catharines, in Bradley’s own riding – and still, Ole Greenbelt Bradley was invisible!

What's Bradley's excuse now?

Kalvin Reid wrote in “Greenbelt protecting endangered trees”, (St. Catharines Standard, Feb. 1, 2006):

“Ontario's greenbelt was established to protect rapidly-vanishing natural areas of southern Ontario, and that's exactly what it's doing, says St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley.

Particularly in the case of the red mulberry and cucumber trees, which are listed as endangered in Ontario and are protected within the bounds of the greenbelt.

"The greenbelt is there to protect natural areas of the province in perpetuity," said Bradley, the minister of tourism with responsibility for the greenbelt foundation. "Without it, urban sprawl would continue to creep out, step by step, onto environmentally-sensitive lands."

Yet today, under Bradley, the farmer is the one "rapidly-vanishing" and 'creeping out' of existence. Bradley’s greenbelt supposedly 'protects endangered trees' - but what does it do to "protect" the endangered farmer? Bradley's 'greenbelt' never mentions much about the actual farmer, does it?

"The wilderness we have out there would simply disappear without the greenbelt," Bradley rationalized then. Yet today, Bradley runs and hides when asked to provide details how his greenbelt “helped” the Ferrettis. Farmers and their trees are now 'disappearing WITH' Bradley’s greenbelt!

The “endangered species” is now becoming the farmer! Yet, where is Ole Jim Greenbelt Bradley’s voice?

The St. Catharines Standard editorial of Nov.25, 2003 wrote about the newly-elected Liberal government’s murky greenbelt plans.

“Niagara has a strong voice at the cabinet table in St. Catharines MPP and Tourism Minister Jim Bradley, whose desire to see tender- fruit lands preserved is well-known. Bradley vowed late last week that farmers will be consulted and he acknowledged the need to ensure viable farms if the land is to be frozen in that use.
We can be sure Bradley will make his voice heard, but we need to make sure others are equally vocal so Niagara's interests are well represented in development of the greenbelt commission.”

Where's that supposedly "strong voice" today?!

That “strong voice” of Jim B.S. Bradley today has become a muted whimper!

Today, Bradley has no song-and-dance routine with which to smugly bluff his way through this embarrassing blowback to his statist Liberal dogma.

Here’s some of the discussion from Ontario's Legislative Assembly on Apr.22, 2008:

“Mr. Tim Hudak: A question to the Premier: On Friday, the remaining 120 workers at CanGro in Niagara were summoned to hear the very unfortunate news that the deal to purchase and invest in the facility fell through, and they would be out of work. The Premier knows a private sector consortium, led by respected Niagara business leaders, was bringing about $20 million to the table to keep the plant open and was looking for provincial support. Premier, why did the province of Ontario walk away from the table and allow CanGro to close?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I'll speak to the first question; I know my colleague will want to speak to the supplementary.

Let me tell you that we worked as hard as we possibly could to pull out all the stops, to find a way to bring parties to the table and to ensure that parties might be willing in terms of ensuring some kind of succession plan for this business. We know this is really tough on the families. We have a number of programs in place, close to $2 billion now by way of special programs, including our Next Generation of Jobs Fund. I know that the minister could speak to the details of this, but my advice to my colleagues was to do everything we possibly could to see if we might land some kind of a succession plan for this particular enterprise. Unfortunately, it was not there. We could not make it happen. It is with great regret that the ensuing result has been made apparent, but we will work as hard as we can with those workers in that community, and throughout Ontario, to find new jobs.

Mr. Tim Hudak: I say to the Premier that municipal leaders, business leaders and tender fruit growers would have a completely different view, indeed, about the lack of activity of the province of Ontario to try to save this plant. The Premier also knows that this impacts on some 150 growers representing 2,600 acres of pear and peach land in the peninsula. They're now being pulled out of the ground.

Premier, when it comes to the greenbelt, you have become an absentee landlord. You find a way to give Magna Corp. some $50 million, and they're paying their CEO some $40 million per year. Last week, you gave a foreign-owned pharmaceutical plant some $14 million, despite their $4 billion in international sales.

Premier, I ask you, why do you give big grants to foreign-owned multinationals, but walk away from tender fruit growers and workers in Niagara?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Economic Development and Trade.

Hon. Sandra Pupatello: I'm very happy to address this, and I want to say first off that the very premise of the member's supplementary question simply is not based in fact. I have to say that we have had ongoing discussions on a personal level, both my ministry and the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, with Lord Mayor Burroughs. There are members who are leaders from the Niagara region who are in the House today who will attest to the work that we in my ministry have done on a personal level on this particular issue. We have worked very hard to try to keep CanGro in operation in the Niagara region as the last remaining canning opportunity here in Ontario.

When we were at the table, making the offers that we have made, we needed to have the company at the table with us. Unfortunately, CanGro was not in a position to want to work with the numbers of people that we brought to the table to try to do a deal. That's a very unfortunate outcome. We will work very diligently with the economic commission of the Niagara region, as we have in the past. The leadership is here today that will prove that that has in fact been the case and will continue to be the case, to find good jobs-

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you. New question.”

That’s it ??

‘We tried …’ ??!

So what if some farmers suffer for the Greater Good that is “the greenbelt”? So what that the Liberals walked away from a deal, (just like McGuinty walked away from that cancer patient during the election)?

The St. Catharines Standard wrote in "Where do we grow from here?" (May 3, 2008): “Food sovereignity is the right of people, communities and countries to define their own agricultural, food, labour, and land policies that are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate for their circumstances.”

Well, that mouthful of rhetoric just about covers and explains everything, both for and against the greenbelt, environmentalism, statism, interference with free trade, freezing property rights, wage controls, you name it.…!

McGuinty has become more than just an "absentee landlord" – his Liberals have usurped our sovereignity. Farmers are now vassals to their Liberal master’s greenbelt, and paying their tithe to local Liberal Lord Bradley for the privilege.

The Greenbelt was “devastating” to his farm said Mr. Ferretti, who explained to the gathered crowd he had worked his farm since he was 25; and that only now had he and his wife got it to the point that they could leave something for their kids.

Standing in the orchard, amongst those thousands of doomed peach trees bursting with their pink-blossomed promise of spring, many of us in the crowd at Nokara Farms felt an overwhelming sense of loss.
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