Townships drift left, perceived as turning against farmers

LANARK — As federal and provincial governments drift to the left, townships are heading the same way. 

The consequence is that they are turning against farmers, says long time grassroots leader and Lanark County crop farmer John Vanderspank.

“It’s disgusting,” he told Farmers Forum. “It’s every one of them. There’s hardly a township that’s pro-farming anymore. They’re all supporting the ban on chemicals. They’re making things harder. There are roads we can’t go down with our big machinery anymore.” 

His own township of Drummond had a pro-ag council until recently. “The last four years started to get really bad.”

Nearby Tay Valley Township has been worse for 10 to 15 years, he said.

He said his lawyer was on the Tay Valley council but he couldn’t fix anything “Two were pro-fixing stuff and three were against it and it didn’t matter if he was even right, they voted against him. And that’s the way it’s going.”

The rural-urban divide exacerbates the tension. The BSE crisis in 2003 killed small beef farming in Lanark County and many of those properties were purchased by city people moving to the country, and many become bad neighbours, Vanderspank said. 

Far worse for local level governments across the country is their reputation as the wild west for their perceived corruption, either merited or not. Governments of all levels have suffered an image crisis. In 2014, an Ernst & Young study found that “20 per cent of Canadian executives believe bribery and corruption are widespread in this country.”

Last year, former Toronto Conservative MP Stella Ambler started a group called Municipal Watch, with the sole purpose of cleaning up what she calls the “madness.”  While the group sputtered out of the starting gate, Ambler made her point. 

“There’s no opposition built into the municipal system,” she said. “There are far too many municipalities that are over spending, over taxing and over regulating.”