Guest Post: Paul Wartman on Foodstock

Sarah Harmer at Foodstock, photo by Diogenes Baena

Hello All! Today's post is a thoughtful contribution from Paul Lion Wartman, a 4th year undergraduate student at the University of Guelph. Mr. Wartman is engaged with local organic food production, sustainable living, promoting social and environmental justice. Below are his thoughts from Foodstock:

      Last Sunday, October 16th, a counted 30,000 people came together in the forested, agricultural land of Honeywood, ON to celebrate Foodstock. Community members of Guelph jumped on their bikes, hopped in their cars and piled, literally, into buses with family and friends to join the festivities. Everyone was gathering there to support the provincial efforts to stop a local issue - the Mega Quarry… as well as to enjoy the local bounty prepared by 100+ chefs from across Canada, which was complemented by the musical talent of Jim Cuddy, Sarah Harmer and many others!

     Once there, people trekked across farm field paths to the entrance of the forest.  Greeted by friendly volunteers that were collecting registration donations, "pay what you can" with a recommended donation of $10, we chirped with excitement. Upon entering the forest, people stopped and stared. It was as if entering a dream! Amongst the stands of fall coloured trees were pockets of tents that had chefs crafting together their meals to share. Many were cooking the locally produced food over fire pits, which added multiple streams of aromas that pulled you in different directions. With home-brought plates, cups and cutlery in hand we gathered our senses and galloped towards the smells. First table had little tarts filled with goat cheese, produced just 3 km away, mixed with berries it was quite the treat! Next was squash gnocchi! I don't know if you can imagine how it tasted swirled with maple syrup and sage! Ah! Plates moved, pulling their human parts from location to location being settled by the warm pockets of sunshine and acoustic tunes during their short journeys.

    Grazing throughout the art stands and mud-jumping children, eating mouths took time to discuss the issues at hand. Where would all this amazing food come from if this class A farming and ranching land turned into a quarry? We enjoyed our vegetarian poutine, those potatoes grew here. What about the water? Wouldn't digging 200ft below the water table in the headwaters of 5 major river systems affect the flow? These are all important issues to be pondered.

    Overall, it was a fantastic experience, rich with culture, that left you feeling satisfied. We left with new energy and hope that our efforts here today and our continued efforts will help prevent the proposed Mega Quarry and to create new policy to help make the necessary process of aggregate production less destructive to the environment.

For more information on the Mega Quarry and the efforts surrounding it, check out these links:

http://ndact.com/

http://www.highlandcompanies.ca/index.php/companies/melancthonquarry/

-Paul Wartman

Oct 19, 2011

hudak will not raise taxes. or expectations.

Taxes. I have a love/hate relationship with taxes. I hate paying them, but I love the services they provide. Fundamental to every political campaign is taxes; whether to raise them or not. The more rightist parties want to keep taxes low, while the leftist parties want to increase taxes and pay for more social services. It is a time-old debate.
In an interesting turn of events, Tim Hudak announced yesterday that his party will not raise taxes. He sent an explicit letter to the Chief Electoral Officer that declared his position. There are loop holes around this, such as downloading taxing responsibilities to the province *cough*Mike Harris*cough*. But Mr. Hudak also stated he would not increase the tax responsibilities of the province. woo hoooo!
You may be asking yourself, "Why would a party leader explicitly state their intentions during a campaign? Isn't it better to use vague political mumbo-jumbo and leave the outcome open-ended; so no matter what you do, you can say you met your "goals"? That may be so, but under the Tax Payer Protection Act parties are forced to announce their tax intentions before an election.
I admire Mr. Hudak's goals. Taxes suck. But let's be realistic. Taxes go up because government plays an increasingly bigger role in everyone's lives, whether we like it or not. More of us are crowding into increasingly smaller spaces, and the government sorts out the repercussions. Maybe if everyone just stopped making babies we could expect government to play a smaller role and taxes to go down.
I don't mean to say the Conservatives are off the mark, in terms of their ideology, but let's be serious. No tax increases for the next 4 years? seriously? You better not close my hospital... or let bums control my water supply. 

compare party platforms. easily.

You want a job? I want a job! Hopefully we don't want the same job, or else one of us is going to be unemployed :(

No, that was a poor joke; but job creation is a major policy area being explored in each party's platform. All the parties have the overarching goal of keeping everyone employed, at a decent wage, but the mechanisms they use differ between parties. Should we hire more underutilized immigrants? Should we cut corporate taxes so they can expand their business and hire more employees? or should we hire more bureaucrats to help promote small business on a national and global scale?

The Globe and Mail has compiled party's Provincial platforms for specific policy areas. It is nice to see all the headlining grabbing proposals all in one place. It is limited in scope and there is no way to tell what was left out without actually reading their platforms in their entirety. But who cares? It is so easy to use! Below I have copied the policy proposals regarding Job Creation.

Ontario Liberal Party

-Create a tax credit for businesses that hire skilled newcomers

-Double the premier’s trade missions to eight, to help businesses access new markets

-Make the Northern Ontario Heritage fund and Eastern Ontario Development funds permanent, as well as create a new Southwestern Ontario Economic Development Fund

-Move ahead with the Water Opportunities and Water Conservation Act to develop innovations in clean water technology, with the goal of of creating clean water jobs

-Reduce small business tax rates to 4 per cent

Ontario PC

-Create a tax credit for employers who sponsor language training for newcomers to Ontario

-Introduce a small business “bill of rights,” guaranteeing small businesses a greater voice in new legislations and regulations

-Appoint a minister responsible for eliminating red tape for business owners

-Create a Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, to assist farmers and small business owners

-Reduce the basic corporate income tax rate from 11.5 per cent to 10 per cent by 2013

-Create 200,000 new apprenticeships over four years for skilled tradespeople

Ontario New Democrats

-Create a 10 per cent tax credit for companies that invest in buildings, machinery and equipment in the province, and for companies who provide training for staff to upgrade their skills

-Create a new 'Job Creation Tax Credit' that would reimburse employers 20 per cent of wages for a new hire's first year, up to $5,000 per employee.

-Reduce the small business tax rate to 4 per cent

-Raise corporate tax rate back to 14 per cent, where it was in June of last year before the implementation of the HST

-Make it law for government contracts to be rewarded to Ontario companies

-Reject the London Stock Exchange’s takeover of the Toronto Stock Exchange

-Amend Ontario’s mining act to make it law that resources mined in Ontario must also be processed in Ontario 

Check out the rest of the policy areas and each parties stance, by clicking HERE

edumacation highlights.

This picture is totally unrelated to my post below. I just thought it captured so much raw emotion. It is a poverty advocate confronting McGuinty in 2007. Her immense finger waving abilities are superbly captured.

The Ontario Provincial election campaigns are well underway, with every leader touting how their platform is better than the others. Certain issues tend to galvanize the electorate more than others, bring about the ire of the party leaders, and garnish the most media attention. We always have the standard rhetoric of health care, education, security, employment, immigration, etc. But election campaigns and platforms may tend to emphasize certain issues more than others.

Here are some highlights

Education:

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals offering a 30% tuition cut for post-secondary students

Isn't this just fabulous? maybe. This is a huge and costly promise. Don't get me wrong, I think it is wonderful that education will become more accessible to a wider range of people, and the lessened debt burdens of students will allow them to better enter the workforce. But at the moment, there is a criticism that there are no jobs for people coming out of university. I mean... there are jobs, but people are underemployed. An educated workforce doesn't matter if there no jobs. McGuinty has framed himself as the "education" candidate. I feel the "economy" is a bigger issue at contention in this election, so maybe framing himself this early in the campaign will be a problem.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals offering full day kindergarten by 2014... and Hudak's PCs offering the same thing...

The Liberals have been developing full day kindergarten programs for the past 2 years. During those 2 years, Tim Hudak complained about the program. But now... the Progressive Conservative platform wants to implement Full-Day-K, across the province. This shows that Tim Hudak is not a devout ideologue; he is a pragmatist that listens to polls (however delayed his response may be).

Hudak's PCs removing $30million of subsidies to foreign students and redirecting to OSAP funding

Policies like this are great because they make headlines, and maybe someone will derive the message, "Ohh isn't that great! Hudak prioritizes Canadians over foreigners". Well you must weigh the benefits and costs of giving grants to foreign students. Foreign students come to Canada with immense talents and contribute to knowledge creation. We give grants to foreign students because they are the best in the world, and fulfil roles that have not been filled by Canadian students. This does not mean that Canadian students were not given the chance.

A foreign student is a major bonus for Canada. We did not have to pay the cost of raising them, providing them with education, health care, etc, for the first couple decades of their life. Then they come here and research, study, contribute to knowledge creation, and will probably generate profits for someone down the road (hopefully they stay in Canada). Plussss, foreign students bring money from another country and spend it in Canada. Yipppeeeee!

Anyways, Hudak wants to use that money to expand OSAP.

party platform shoes.

Elections platforms are actually very similar to platform shoes. They both support people. The bigger a shoe's platform is, the harder time someone will have walking in them. But a bigger shoe platform makes it more stylish.

The bigger and more comprehensive a party's platform is, the harder time they will have living up to their promises and sticking to the schedule. But a bigger and more comprehensive election platform is more appealing to the masses (ie. more stylish)

Here's some links to the Party's Platforms. Read (skim), them over and see what you like or don't like. Make your own decision; we have enough distortion of platforms from the politicians themselves.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberal Platform

Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservative Platform

Andrea Horwath's NDP Platform

windmills and wage, blowing in the breeze

What should minimum wage be? $10.25? $11? $25?? Too bad you don't get to pick your own wage. I would pick something unreasonably high. but that's just me.

Dalton McGuinty's Provincial Liberal's have frozen minimum wage and halted offshore wind farms (as was mentioned in a previous post).

Wind-farm, minimum-wage moves not linked to election, McGuinty says

wind blows. apparently.

I love the way wind bites my face as I walk to school. It stings a little, mostly in the recesses of my nostrils. Sometimes when I step outside first thing in the morning, I am afraid to inhale because the cold air burns my lungs as they adjust to the outside temperature.

Wow, that has nothing to do with anything.

Ok, so this past week the Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty put the kibosh on off shore wind farms. A minor component of Ontario's renewable energy strategy was placed under a moratorium, due to a "lack of research on the health effects of windmills". People living in close proximity to windmills report nausea, dizziness, and headaches. The Premiere's election campaign has been met with fierce "Anti-Windmill" resistance, mainly in the form of NIMBYism. Other provincial parties claim the premier's move to stop offshore windmills was purely political; meaning it was only to garner votes. Who Knows?

I can see how the loud whirring of a windmill may cause irritation. But dizziness? You'd either have to stand really close, or be constantly staring at it to get dizziness. Maybe just put the windmills far away from densely populated areas? How close do you have to be to a windmill in order to be affected? Is the constant low frequency being emitted a problem? I don't know. There is some legitimacy in the "windmills are bad for you campaign", but there is also legitimacy in the "let's use more renewable energy campaign"

We must find a compromise. Who would least benefit from renewable wind energy? Would it cut into the profits of natural gas suppliers? How would 1000 windmills per sq. mile affect aquatic life? Does the value presented in offshore wind power outweigh the environmental and social upset?

I wish Canada would follow the reported success of Holland's wind power generation. But even in Holland , the land of the windmill, there has been a negative response from townsfolk who live with windmills.

Here are some news articles:

Wind farm moratorium not election-based: McGuinty - CTV news

Study to determine health effects of turbines - Globe and Mail