PelhamToday received the following letter to the editor regarding responsibility for the Ford government's recent Greenbelt decisions:
So Ryan Amato is taking the fall for the bad process re the Greenbelt. It is inconceivable that his Minister and the Premier did not know what was going on. And if they didn't, they should have. I hope they don't think that the price for the poor decision has been paid, or that this is over. Or does the government of the day think we're that gullible? That we don't know that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark"?
Western Canada and the North are literally burning down around us (shades of Rome and Nero aka Ford?) because of politicians all around the world who for decades and decades have been making short-sighted corporate-friendly decisions around the environment. During Covid we learned what it means when supply chains are cut off. And yet this government's decision means that we are giving up farmland and locally produced food. You cannot make new farmland. But you can put subdivisions in different places.
Indeed many of us who live in Pelham, myself included, were allowed and/or encouraged by government policy (or the lack of it) to build on its excellent farmland. Makes me feel somewhat of a hypocrite, but I can't afford to tear my house down now, 45 years later. And then there's the whole issue of flooding caused by climate change and aggravated by disturbed wetlands, etc.
Think back to Joni Mitchell who sang in 1970:
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Let's keep up the pressure on this government.
Tillie Clapp
Fenwick
