Editorials - Sept. 8, 2023
A thankless job
For as long as mankind has been putting seeds in the ground to feed themselves, Mother Nature has been playing cruel jokes. No other profession is so keenly tied to the weather than farming, and non-farmers may joke that the farmers are just never happy, but when your livelihood is dependent on a very strict set of parameters, it is rare to get an “ideal” growing season.
Early dry spells, followed by a wet July, are wreaking havoc on southwestern Ontario’s wheat yields. To the untrained eye, many of us thought that the crops had lucked out with rain arriving in time to save the harvest, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.
The heavy rain, especially south of us, is also damaging some corn. Farmers are now praying for a dry fall so that profits aren’t eaten up by drying costs. September rushed in with a heat wave, so hopes are high that we won’t cool down too quickly before the corn has a chance to mature.
With so much at stake and most factors far beyond the farmers’ control, agriculture has to be one of the most stressful occupations. As the climate changes and extreme weather events become more common, it will likely become even more difficult to grow enough food to feed the world, leaving farmers to carry even more worry. – DS
Off the market
Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark has resigned from his cabinet position amid damning accusations of breaches of conflict of interest clauses in regards to the Greenbelt and a process that is alleged to have favoured certain developers.
This editorial was due to call for his resignation, but, despite Premier Doug Ford standing by his minister, Clark did the hard work for us. But, frankly, it isn’t enough. Ford’s government has shown that it’s willing to do away with ethics in order to make money for friendly developers in a way that will forever alter the environment in Ontario and the resignation of one figurehead isn’t going to change that. Paul Calandra will surely be the next “Yes Man” that Ford needs in that position to do his bidding and nothing will change - or at least that’s what many Ford critics will fear.
The brazen nature with which this Greenbelt land swap has occurred should give Ontarians of all political stripes chills. It won’t, of course, but it should. If a government proves itself to be corrupt (or, at the very least, prone to being corruptible), it’s only a matter of time until it spreads. If you don’t care about the Greenbelt, maybe next time it will be something you do care about. Then what?
Ford has bred an army of MPPs who wouldn’t dare cross him or “go against the family” to borrow a Godfather-ism, so, if Ford has shown this to be who he is, his team will continue to do his bidding, Auditor General reports be damned. And no amount of resignations or cabinet shuffles seem like they are going to change that. The province needs a government that works for Ontarians and strives to better our lives and we don’t appear to have one at the moment. – SL
Another day in the sun
When a person struggling with addiction is confronted with the reality of the harm caused by their actions, they will often use excuses to keep their habits going for another day, week, month or year. There will be a time for healing, just later.
A new Ipsos poll indicates that a growing majority of Canadians believe that governments and businesses need to do more to address the climate crisis, especially in the wake of a record-breaking wildfire season this year. However, opinions are divided on when to take real action on climate change, as pressing economic concerns are top of mind for many Canadians.
The affordability crisis is an undeniably urgent and deeply complex issue, as is the climate crisis, and it behooves our governments, businesses and citizens to stop thinking of them as two separate issues. Groceries become less affordable, for example, when environmental issues created by our rapidly changing climate cause gaps in our global food network.
Canadians must seriously begin to grapple with the reality that we are losing parts of our habitat that we have always relied on for shelter and resources to climate change. That loss is as expensive as it is devastating, and the people who have the least already will be the ones to pay the most, which is so often the case in times of great trouble.
Huron County’s economy is deeply tied to agriculture, which means that if our environment suffers, our economy suffers. We cannot put off the climate crisis until we deal with the affordability crisis, because they are deeply enmeshed, and a failure to handle one ensures the exacerbation of the other, with increasing extreme consequences.
The centre cannot hold. If we keep on kicking the climate crisis can down the road, it will, quite frankly, kill us all. – SBS