MPP’s Schreiner, Brady take to Hamilton city hall with their bill to protect Ontario’s farmland

Hamilton City Hall is an unusual place to see two Members of Provincial Parliament but Green Party leader Mike Schreiner says, with 319 acres of farmland being lost every day in the province, the time to act is now.

“There is lots of farmland outside of the greenbelt that needs to be protected as well and so that’s why the idea of a food belt to complement the greenbelt and to ensure that we are protecting agricultural lands across Ontario is so important,” says Mike Schreiner.

Both Schreiner and Haldimand and Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady have worked together on Bill 21, the Protect Our Food Act. It’s about protecting agricultural land to ensure food security into the future.

The Bill would make it harder for designated farm land to be re-zoned.

Schreiner says the Ford government’s controversial Bill 5 could expedite the loss of agricultural land.

“We are deeply concerned that the premier could declare agricultural land a special economic zone, fast track development and remove local and provincial planning laws,” Schreiner says.

“There’s about 810 farms across the city of Hamilton, about roughly 118 thousand acres of cultivation and about 73 percent of Hamilton is rural,” says Drew Spoelstra the President of Ontario’s Federation of Agriculture.

Schreiner says now more than ever people want to buy locally grown food.

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“People are looking at food labels in a way they never have before, looking at where food is coming from and in many cases people are rejecting food grown in the U.S.,” says Schreiner.

While many argue that land outside of the urban boundary should be used to build more homes in Hamilton, Mayor Andrea Horwath says that’s not necessary right now.

“We have to grow up, we need to intensify our existing serviced land where we already have pipes and we have to make sure we utilize it before we even think about going further out beyond the current urban boundary,” Horwath says.

The delegates today at Hamilton City Hall say once Ontario’s already very limited amount of farm land is paved over there’s no going back.

“Five percent of the land here in Ontario is suitable for food farm production and once we lose that land, once there’s concrete on it or paved over that land is lost for agriculture production,” says Spoelstra.

Schreiner and Brady hope that with Hamilton’s support today other municipalities will get behind their Bill, which will be up for second reading in the legislature in about a year.

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