Now They Come For Our Food
A few elections ago then Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton said of the electricity market: It’s too important to be left to the private sector. A few people I knew agreed with this, to which I always answered, just hope Howard Hampton never notices how you buy your food: the last time some one decided food was too important for the private sector, the Russian people were relegated to 50 years of cabbage soup and black bread. Well don’t look now but…
Michael Ignatieff, who, of course has cake, has proposed a National Food Policy. The Government of Canada would get in the farmers market and local food game. Fourty-million dollars here for a national healthy start (breakfast for brats) program, eighty-million dollars there for a buy local fund and pretty soon your talking real money. Then there’s this:
Reward farmers for environmentally sustainable initiatives such as setting aside land for wildlife habitats or carbon sequestration (emphasis theirs… and mine)
The Liberal government will spend untold millions, hundreds of millions more like, to pay farmers to not grow food. This plan talks of spending $170M, but has hundreds of millions more not factored in. Government food programs in action: more money out the door, less food in.
Then there’s the City of Toronto. I have spent considerable energy on this blog highlighting the folly of the City of Toronto and it’s elected representatives. So it is with some shock I report, they are on to a good idea. Yesterday’s Sun reports the City is considering allowing people to keep chickens in their backyard. Frankly as long as there’s no health hazard – and there isn’t – why it’s the City of anybody’s business if you keep chickens I have no idea. None the less if the chicken lobby gets it’s way, soon you’ll be able to have a couple of chickens producing fresh eggs in a coop on your very own property in Toronto. A few years down the road when the eggs stop coming it’s Ann Boleyn meets Colonel Sanders and dinner has never been so fresh.
Alas, this is the City of Toronto, the people who could screw up letting street vendors sell food. All chickens would have to be registered. That’s right, a chicken registry which, surprisingly, isn’t in Michael Ignatieff’s plan. Presumably the chicken registry is not in case some chicken goes wild and it’s owner needs to be identified, but so that City Hall can tax your free eggs. No doubt you’ll need their permission before putting Betsy in the deep fryer.
Sad to say this scheme also falls under a food plan, in this case the “urban food strategy” that Toronto Public Health is putting together.
The politicians have noticed: look for less food, less selection and higher prices in the food market in coming years.
Iggy’s last contact with a real farm was when he was sniffing odours in his relatives’ barn as a boy. No one in the Liberal caucus can claim farming experience, they have one rural seat left in Ont., none west of there. This program is by Toronto, for Toronto, where they already own most of the seats. If he really wanted to attract rural votes, he would get behind yesterdays motion in the Ont. legislature, for a moratorium on wind “farms”. Of course this would upset Toronto and his Liberal sidekicks in Ont.
You left out 8 million Ukrainians starved to hide the fact state run farms did not work.
In China Mao tried the same thing and millions were starved, the farmers who grew the rice were the ones left to starve.
That a Russian like Ignatieff would even talk this nonsense shows how out of touch with reality he is, he is becoming dangerous in his rhetoric going down roads that he would have been shot for only 50 yrs ago.
Look south to see what Ignatieff’s ideas will bring, economic collapse and could possibly lead to civil war.
He is following Grave’s advice and Obama’s example to all our detriment.
Time for you to pack your bags Iffy and get the eff out of my country! you are a disgrace to every Canadian and every war vet that ever fought against the tyranny of socialist or communist government tyranny.
AS Beck says of the democrats I now say of the Ignatieff Liberals, the mask is off the communist.
Ha just thought of this, I bet I know why the Mayan civilization fell everywhere all at once, government got into the food industry and it collapsed.
Oh – and another bright idea that Toronto could add – from Vancouver with love. Set aside 20K for a chicken shelter – yes folks, this would be for chickens whose owners change their minds and don’t love them any more! Call it harm reduction …
Hmm.. government feeds the people, spends more money. The government tells farmers to vacate the land and pays them to do it. Then the government says to the people: we don’t have money to buy you breakfast anymore and besides, we don’t have enough food now. Yup, communism.
great post as usual!