January 2016 Message from NDACT Chair

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Published on Thursday, 07 January 2016 20:32

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Greetings to everyone and a Happy New Year to you. Here's hoping you had some time to relax and reflect on what a wonderful region and country we live in.

In 2015 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared the International Year of Soils. That brought significant attention to the degradation and disappearance of soils around the globe. That which sustains us doesn't just produce good food, but also function as carbon sinks helping to avert climate change.

Last year also had a significant amount of activity on the issue of land use. The Aggregate Resources Act draft was finally completed and open for public comments until Dec 15. This is the key legislation that we have been lobbying to change for years. Remember that it was the Mega Quarry issue that triggered a review of the ARA. We sent notices out to all supporters that this was a key opportunity to speak up. There were improvements in the draft in the form of increased requirements for studies, however it fell short of the protections we have been asking for all along. NDACT responded with a detailed analysis, and also provided a template version for all of us to submit comments. We remained firm in our ask for total protection for class 1 farmland and no extraction below the water table. We posted and shared our draft with supporters and partner organizations and the support was tremendous. Many organizations weighed in with their own comments and drafts. There will be no further public inputs for this document, so we await the final outcome. That alone will make for an interesting 2016, though it does not stop there.

The year also contained key activity on the Co-ordinated Land Use Planning Review. NDACT was invited to stakeholder sessions (as we were for the ARA). We expect a draft for public comments to be available any time soon, and this will also be a key time for all of us to have our voices heard. We have been vigilant so far and we need to keep up the pressure for protection. Our opportunities to do so will not be endless.

With the increasing focus on climate change there is all the more reason to protect the rich rain-fed food producing lands that we have here in Ontario. We are all voters and consumers. Our voices are the ones that matter. Let us use them in 2016 to move protections forward. We have accomplished so much together.

Thank you to our board members, volunteers, and supporters. Without you we could not have gotten this far.

Eat local and be heard – and have a happy and healthy 2016. Thank you for all that you do.

Shirley Boxem,
NDACT Chair

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