INTERVIEW: Farmers face too much red tape and taxes, OFA president says

OTTAWA — Farmers are facing too much red tape and taxes, and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture will drive that message home with the Ford government in early 2024, according to new OFA president Drew Spoelstra.

But the biggest red tap headache is municipal stormwater management charges, says Spoelstra, who says that will be included in the organization’s planned submission on red-tape issues during the province’s pre-budget consultations.

In Spoelstra’s own municipality — the city of Hamilton, where he and his parents milk 60 cows and crop about 2,000 acres — a new stormwater charge or “rain tax” is set to saddle farmers with thousands of dollars in new fees based on the rainwater shed by their barn roofs and other on-farm hard surfaces. The city intends to charge all property owners under the new scheme to pay for storm sewer upgrades, and that includes rural farms technically within city limits but with no impact on flooding in urban Hamilton.

“These are new taxes being implemented on farmers and farm buildings, and it’s not something we want to see happen,” said Spoelstra, an OFA director of 10 years who replaced dairy farmer and outgoing president Peggy Brekveld in November. A number of Ontario municipalities are introducing stormwater management charges, Spoelstra added, “and that is a concern for farmers and farmland as we go forward.”

He also raised ongoing concern about red-tape regulations affecting local abattoirs and meat processors. “We need to continue to support that network (of processors) as part of the agricultural system,” he said.

More generally, Spoelstra expects to continue raising awareness about protecting farmland in 2024, even after the Ford government’s major retreat last year on greenbelt development and residential farm lot severances. “We continue to talk about land use, urban sprawl, and the unsustainable continued loss of farmland, that has been a major concern of ours the last number of years, and there’s still a lot of pressure on farmland right now.”

Pre-budget discussions include the idea of new “risk management-type programs” to mitigate “some of the threats of climate change” as well as the bottom-line risks of unexpected geopolitical events, he said. “Who’d have ever thought we’d see things like we’ve been seeing in Russia and Ukraine and all the challenges that created with the fertilizer market? So there’s a lot of things out of our control as farmers and we need to be able to manage those risks as effectively as we can to continue to operate our businesses here at home.”

As for the top issue arising from the climate change agenda in Canada — the federal carbon tax — Spoelstra confirmed that the OFA remains opposed to the imposition of the tax on farm fuels used to dry grain and heat barns. The organization was disappointed by the recent failure of Bill C-234, which would have offered some relief.

He sees agriculture and livestock as part of the planet’s current carbon and nitrogen cycles. Their emissions must be seen alongside the carbon captured by farm crops and soils, he said, a concept “not always popular when you talk to environmental groups … but that is the way this business has always operated and probably always will,” he said.

Back on his own farm, he looks forward to completing the installation of cow-milking robots this winter. Spoelstra and his wife, Heather, also raise Clydesdale horses.