Food and Water First
Food Water FirstNDACT
(North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce, Inc.)
We are an incorporated, not for profit, entity which was formed in January 2009 by concerned citizens from Melancthon and Mulmur Townships.
The NDACT executive board was formed by a group of volunteers nominated by community members.
At the inaugural meeting, members of the community gathered to voice their concerns and to find out more about The Highland Companies plans regarding the more than 6,000 acres of prime agricultural land that they had amassed as of that date. Up to that point in time, and for a lengthy period of time afterwards, Highland reiterated to the community that they had been acquiring large tracts of agricultural land solely with a view to creating a world class farming operation, but residents were highly skeptical.
By the date of the meeting, there was a growing suspicion in the area that other plans were afoot, although the applicant would not clearly admit so. There was significant evidence that the applicant was undertaking activities that were inconsistent with its stated intentions (of just being interested in potato farming) including well testing and drilling, archaeological studies, woodlot and fence row clearing and the demolition of homesteads. Highland stated that these activities were merely to improve their farming operations.
NDACT Spring 2015 Newsletter
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- Published on Friday, 01 May 2015 12:01
Highlights:
- Messages from the Chair and Board
- Co-ordinated land review
- Spring sign campaign
- Upcoming events
NDACT Winter 2015 Newsletter
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- Published on Thursday, 19 February 2015 21:10
As you hopefully know by now, the The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has declared this the International Year of Soils. That may not sound very exciting, but then soil hasn’t exactly gotten celebrity status in the media. NDACT, in particular our Food and Water First Team, promote the protection of food and water, and it is our land, consisting of mostly soil, that underpins all of this.
October 2014 Newsletter
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- Published on Monday, 27 October 2014 20:26
Catch up on the news.
Read our Oct. 2014 Newsletter.
July 2014 Newsletter
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- Published on Tuesday, 01 July 2014 02:26
Message from the Chair
Vigilance is ever so important, knowledge and education right up there with it. Case in point, the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA) released its peer review of the Highland Companies Mega Quarry application. Link at: http://www.ndact.com/index.php/media-stories/media-stories-blogs/946-peer-review-of-highland-companies-mega-quarry-documentation-is-released
It is not surprising at all.
A special “Thank you” goes to Mono Councillor Fred Nix who worked diligently in support of those of us who wanted the report released. With the application withdrawal, the report is not complete, but fascinating none the less.
There are many on NDACT’s mailing list who are fighting their own issues.
Please spend some time reading the document, not only to learn about the facts here, but to learn how “Consulting” Companies interpret their own data in ways to please the ‘applicant’, with little regard for ‘doing the right thing’.
And, we all can learn out of it what questions to ask when other applications surface, if you just read between the lines of this scathing review.
How petty can things become.
Many of you will remember the Highland Companies billboard on the Laverty barn on County Road 124.
John Scherer
John Scherer, the smallish man who was on the “Agenda” representing the Highland Companies, offered the billboard to NDACT at a “substantial savings from what we paid for it”, but when we were not prepared to engage in that conversation he had it taken down.
November 2013 Newsletter
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- Published on Friday, 15 November 2013 01:25
Food and Water First
Early comments regarding the ARA Review,
We are all fired up, and stronger now than we were at the outset of this discussion. Please, stay engaged and let your views be known, after all, it was your involvement that drove the Highland Companies’ decision to withdraw its Mega Quarry application and sell its land. You will be instrumental once more in driving proper policy change.
The Mega Quarry application was made because Baupost (Highland) determined that Ontario has the weakest regulatory environment governing resource extraction in Canada, enabling anyone to pillage the very resources Ontario needs to drive parts of its own economy. This issue of reviewing the antiquated ARA was never about aggregate. It was always about better planning.
In order to function properly, and to focus its energies on its priorities, aggregate producers require a social license, legislation and policy that govern their activities around resource extraction in Ontario. OSSGA had a huge lapse in judgment. Instead of helping to create a document that would lessen rural strife and being a responsible corporate partner, OSSGA members will continue to be challenged by communities in which they want to do business and will have to defend their businesses. Instead of doing better and voluntarily recognizing that Prime Farmland and Source Water Regions should be off limits, OSSGA has clearly belittled the efforts of thousands of Ontarians who have so reasonably engaged in this policy development process. The public at large will continue to withhold that social license until there is modernized legislation.
Nothing in the ARA review document would prevent another Mega Quarry application tomorrow, destroying forever thousands of acres of our most productive farmland and putting the control of unbelievably vast amounts of Ontario’s fresh water under foreign control!!!
The new legislation has to recognize Prime Farmland as a strategic provincial resource.
The new legislation has to protect Source Water Regions by eliminating industrial extraction in those regions.
As an engaged public, both urban and rural, we have had all kinds of assurances from MPPs that the thousands of people had been heard. Now is the time for those MPPs to act, not just speak.