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Patricia Eales will take a petition of 8,000 names to a GO Transit board meeting next week. She wants partial refunds when trains are 20 minutes late.

Oakville rider who began online petition criticizing rail service has become a powerful voice for change

They’re late for work and late coming home to pick up the kids from daycare.

Now GO riders are going to be charged more for what many are calling “atrocious” and “abysmal” service, says an Oakville woman who has become the voice of frustrated commuters across the region.

Pat Eales will take an 8,000-name online petition to the March 14 meeting of the GO board of directors. She plans to ask the board to postpone the fare increase planned for March 15 until GO can run its trains on time.

“Most of the people I rode the trains with, we felt our complaints were being dropped into a bottomless bucket. Now at least people think there’s a collective voice,” said Eales yesterday.

The petition asks GO to refund 50 per cent of fares when trains are late by 20 minutes or more, and to provide better notification of delays.

“We don’t mind paying a good fare for a good service. Just give us good service,” she said.

Eales started the petition Feb. 11, after train delays made her late arriving to work five days in a row, at a job she’d only started in November.

A busy single mother, Eales says an earlier train would put her at the office more than an hour ahead of her start time, but she wouldn’t be able to leave early.

Driving doesn’t make sense because by the time she learns of delays, she’s usually on the train platform, having paid her fare.

“There are obviously people who agree with her,” said GO spokesperson Stephanie Sorensen. “GO and the board are taking her concerns very seriously.”

The transit agency reported that 83 per cent of its trains ran on time last year, down from about 90 per cent in 2006.

Although it’s adding 27 faster locomotives that can pull an extra two cars, that won’t have an impact until later this year, after crews are trained and platforms lengthened throughout the system.

The only new locomotive running so far is temporarily assigned to the Lakeshore line.

Twelve-car trains that can accommodate an additional 300 people each won’t be in service until the summer and will be brought onto the Milton line first, Sorensen said.

Eales’s petition has helped “because now people are paying attention to the situation,” said Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who has persuaded Queen’s Park to appoint a customer service expert to a vacancy on the GO board.

“We need somebody who knows how to deal with people. We need somebody at the decision-making level looking at this through a customer service lens,” he said.

“You can’t have an economy the size of Toronto’s and not have a good train system. It doesn’t make any sense.

“If you look at any other jurisdiction around the world, it’s just not optional,” said Flynn.

– By Tess Kalinowski, Transportation Reporter for the Toronto Star

UPDATE: GO SAYS NO 11,000 TIMES

Board refuses to grant fare rebates for delayed trains despite petition from dissatisfied riders

They listened, but Pat Eales isn’t convinced GO Transit’s board of directors heard the deafening hue and cry of frustrated commuters demanding better service and a refund when trains are late.

“They just kept bringing up the same old excuses – the weather, the switches – and that it wasn’t their fault,” the Oakville mother of two said after tabling copies of an online petition at yesterday’s board meeting, supported by almost 11,000 dissatisfied riders.

The petition called for a 50 per cent refund on fares when trains are delayed 20 minutes or more. Eales also asked the board to freeze fare hikes until trains run as scheduled.

But her requests fell on deaf ears. A 15-cent-per-ride fare increase on a single adult ticket goes into effect today. Board chair Peter Smith confirmed there will be no refunds, something he said would spell disaster for the system in the throes of a major expansion.

GO Transit relies on the fare box for operating funds, so essentially riders themselves would be picking up the cost of the refunds.

Eales, however, did walk away with assurances that an advisory board will be established to handle service and reliability issues.

Smith later invited Eales to join that committee. She hasn’t yet decided if she will.

A plan for an improved communication system to advise riders of cancellations and delays was also approved.

During her presentation, Eales called on the board to fix glitches, even those that are out of its control. Tracks, switches and crews are under the jurisdiction of CN and CP, which own the rails GO uses.

“Stop thanking us for our patience and apologizing for any inconvenience you may have caused us. `Sorry’ doesn’t help when we are late for work or late home at night.”

Eales, a single mother of two teens who lives in Bronte, told the Star her patience with the transit system ran out in February after GO problems made her late five days in a row for her new job as an executive assistant at a not-for-profit academic research centre. She had tried emailing GO Transit authorities to complain about the system but got the run-around. She filled out a ridership survey but no one contacted her.

Unless the system becomes more reliable, she warned the board, transit users will get back into their cars.

Eales urged riders to take advantage of the “silent rebate” available at the customer service kiosk at Union Station. Staff offer vouchers when riders complain about late or cancelled trains.

With ridership increasing by 10,000 a day over last year, “we’re the victims of our own success,” Smith said in response, noting that improvements are on the horizon to ease the crunch.

About 170,000 people ride the trains on a typical weekday. “We don’t have the capacity on our trains or lines,” he said. “We’re building that capacity, but it takes a long time.”

Frances Chung, GO’s director of financial services, reported on major work underway to improve the aging signal and switching system. A 33-kilometre third track is being built on the Lakeshore corridor from Hamilton to Oshawa to increase capacity and reduce delays. New locomotives capable of pulling 12 cars are coming on board, as are new bi-level coaches. Crew staffing is also being increased.

Eales’ petition is to go to the Ontario Legislature next week.

– by Leslie Ferenc of the Toronto Star

The global movement to step out of the artificial light and into complete darkness – to draw attention to climate change – is snowballing across the country.

Since the launch of the Toronto Star’s countdown to Earth Hour, cities across the country have been signing up. Montreal has announced its intention to join up and Sarnia, Ontario has also been welcomed to the campaign.

“I’ve been a great believer that governments are too slow on moving on these issues,” said Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. “Here is a way of getting a lot of people involved at no cost.”

Participation is as simple as turning off your lights – between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on March 29.

Bradley pointed out that Earth Hour is not all about sacrifice. “I also think it’s going to have a very positive impact on national unity because Canadians from coast to coast can all shut off Don Cherry all at the same time.”

Among those Canadians are the residents of Halton Region and Mississauga who also officially committed to the project this week.

Mississauga Councillor George Carlson said since the campaign was announced Mayor Hazel McCallion and the 11 councillors were 100 per cent on board.

“In fact some of them wanted to jump in with both feet and do things like turning out the street lights and shutting down recreation centres,” he said.

Their plan is to work with local environmental groups to get the message out and shut down as many lights as possible, including many at City Hall, he said.

“We unanimously supported it, which is a nice change for council.”

Sarnia, as Bradley points out, already has several green initiatives on the go. It has the largest solar farm in North America and one of the largest biofuel plants in the country, he said.

Bradley said if people were really realistic about problems with power shortages and air quality, “I could see an hour every day.”

– by Emily Mathieu of the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

A couple of days ago, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released his third budget. This is something unheard of for a minority government being able to have this many budgets without being defeated. In many cases, they’re doing a good job and while most Canadians don’t want an election, they seem comfortable with our MP’s in this minority situation.

Here are a couple of items that I pulled from the budget. All in all, it is a pretty sound plan for the coming years. Some of the big highlights for towns and cities are as follows:

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

Many municipalities require residents to buy tags if they want to throw out extra garbage bags

Toronto’s user-pay system for garbage is a departure from the way waste is collected in surrounding municipalities.

Unlike Toronto, many 905 municipalities continue to use a system limiting the number of bags you may leave at the curb, with tags required if you want to throw out more.

Some municipalities take a gentle approach.

In Markham, for example, which boasts a 70 per cent diversion rate, residents have a three-bag limit per household, with biweekly collection. Those who want to throw out more -garbage need to get a tag from city hall – but it’s free.

The point of making residents go to the effort of getting the tag is to “make people think” about what they are putting out, said town spokesperson Catherine Harrison.

“Failure to comply is not an issue in Markham,” Harrison said. “We have not charged anyone.”

Other municipalities such as Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon (maximum two bags per week), Vaughan (three bags every two weeks), Ajax, Pickering and Oshawa (four bags every two weeks) force residents to pay for that extra bag, charging $1 to $1.50 per tag.

In Halton Region, residents are moving from a generous six-bag weekly collection system to bi-weekly collection, starting in April with the rollout of a green bin program.

Put out more than six, and city officials gently explain the importance of not doing it.

Ignore the warning and you’ll have to cart your extra garbage to a transfer station yourself. Ignore it further and you could get charged with a bylaw offence with a set fine of $90.

Peel Region’s waste management director, Andrew Pollock, said that in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, almost 91 per cent of homes respect the bag limits.

There has been talk, but no decision yet, on reducing bag limits or going biweekly to encourage more diversion.

Durham Region spokesperson Katherine Ross-Perron said Toronto’s approach is to treat garbage like any other utility by forcing users to pay proportionately and taking collection off the tax rolls. She said that in the surrounding regions, it’s likely that garbage collection will continue to be covered by property taxes.

– by Phinjo Gombu

Ron Cauchi, president of Mattamy Homes’ Stelumar Advanced Manufacturing plant, shows off the enormous facility, which can handle the construction of 10 houses at any given time.

Weather problems don’t affect construction since these houses are assembled indoors

It’s a bitter and blustery day on the western edge of Milton; with the wind chill it feels like -18C.

But Brent Bennett is without hat, coat or gloves as he works to install windows and doors in a house under construction.

That’s because Bennett and his co-workers at Mattamy Homes’ Stelumar Advanced Manufacturing plant are building homes indoors, for the nearby Hawthorne Village on the Escarpment site.

Bennett, the lead hand in back framing, has worked in construction for 21 years all over Canada and has had to contend with a variety of conditions, such as “being up to your knees in muck one day on site and then having it all frozen over the next day.

“And we all have to deal with shovelling our driveways, but just imagine having to shovel out a construction site.”

In comparison, he says, building a home in a factory is heaven.

“There are no rain days, no snow days. It’s climate controlled. There’s an advantage to working with dry lumber.”

The cavernous Stelumar facility on Tremaine Rd. south of Derry Rd. produces a new house a day and 10 are in various stages of progress at any one time. Each day at 4 a.m., the moving production line advances the houses – 600,000 pounds worth – to the next work station.

Since it was launched last summer, more than 60 houses have rolled off the Stelumar line and on to waiting foundations. As many as 220 houses a year will be built there over four years.

“Six months ago, this was pretty hot-off-the-press stuff. We didn’t even know if we could do this,” says Stelumar president Ron Cauchi.

There were a few bugs to work out. Initially, the skidding system that moves the homes down the line wasn’t able to handle the weight of 10 houses and needed adjusting, and the roof-hoisting mechanism, which allows for roofs to be fully assembled on the floor and then lifted into place, needed to be developed.

While factory-built homes aren’t a new phenomenon in North America, this facility is a breed apart. Unlike modular builders, which build their homes in sections, then ship the pieces to the site for assembly, the Stelumar homes roll off the line in one piece, with cabinetry, light fixtures, electrical and plumbing systems, and even paint already in place.

“This has nothing to do with modular,” Cauchi says. “These houses are extremely architecturally complex with multiple roof lines, dormers, wraparound porches and lofts.”

Then, there’s the way they are shipped, on a specialized, motorized transporter.

“There’s another difference from modular homes, which are put on a flatbed truck and shipped to a site,” Cauchi says. “This is a pretty complex piece of machinery. It’s like the platform that carries the space shuttle to the launch pad.”

For the one-kilometre, 15-minute journey from factory to building lot, the homes are shipped on a private road within the Mattamy site. The houses could be sent along public roads, Cauchi says, but it would require permits, police escorts and disruption of traffic to accommodate the wide, slow-moving load.

About 200 of 300 homes slated for 36- and 46-foot lots at Hawthorne Village on the Escarpment are being built at Stelumar, and the designs are identical to the homes being built on site. (Homebuyers don’t get to choose whether their homes will be site-built or factory- produced.) Eighteen different models are being produced, each with up to six different elevations.

“There are three, first-floor layouts typically and three choices of second floors, with options like bay or bow kitchen windows and second-floor laundry rooms,” Cauchi says. “It’s pretty darn close to custom building. The choices buyers have are mind-boggling. It’s not at all cookie-cutter manufacturing.”

Cauchi says there are various reasons why Mattamy, the province’s largest builder, has taken to factory building, as well as continuing to construct the conventional way. (Cauchi is quick to add that the site-built homes are of comparable quality.)

“The primary driver is customer satisfaction. It’s (Mattamy CEO) Peter Gilgan’s passion,” Cauchi says. One of the biggest issues with consumers is reliability of closing date, he says, and the factory approach means construction is not affected by weather conditions that cause delays on conventional building sites. “You can keep building even in a blizzard.”

There’s also the issue of quality – in a factory environment, building materials aren’t being exposed to the elements, which may cause lumber to warp. And timing is dead on. Because temperature and humidity can be controlled indoors, drywall mud, for example, dries exactly when it’s supposed to.

The factory approach shaves 70 days off building a house the conventional way – a new home can be turned out from the factory every 11 days. Another two to five weeks are allotted to complete the on-site work, such as bricking the house, steps, porches, hooking up utilities and landscaping. (Building code regulations and weight issues require bricks to be installed on site.)

At the plant, workers have a safe, comfortable environment, don’t have to worry about losing income or making up time due to weather and their tools are in the same location, day after day. The problems of construction site theft are eliminated. And because the workers (100 building crew and 15 office staff) are Mattamy employees, the builder doesn’t have to rely on outside trades.

Currently, it costs more for Mattamy to build the houses indoors than on site, but Cauchi says Stelumar’s mandate is not to cut costs – it’s about improving customer satisfaction and serving as a research and development lab for new technologies and products.

“Today, it operates at a premium but tomorrow, the plan is for a customer satisfaction at neutral cost; to produce the homes at the same cost as on site.”

Mattamy launched a pilot factory in Cambridge a few years ago where homes were built inside an old aircraft hangar.

Those houses were built exactly as they would have been on-site and finished only to the drywall stage before being shipped out. The line didn’t move and trades had to be scheduled, rather than working simultaneously at designated work stations.

Mattamy continues to operate a manufacturing facility in Cambridge, which supplies Milton’s plant with prefabricated wall and floor panels.

The walls are built on 24-inch centres rather than the usual 16, but are stronger because of the rigid polyurethane foam insulation. Value engineering (designing products at the lowest cost while maintaining quality) and computerized design and manufacture allow for optimized load bearing through aligned floor joists, studs and roof trusses, Cauchi says. The timberframe structure itself is more than strong enough to meet requirements. The rigid foam adds a structural strength bonus.

The engineered design also maximizes heating and cooling efficiency as ducts from the basement furnace can be lined up to run straight up to the attic, cutting the distance hot or cool air has to travel.

Rigid foam insulation is usually found only in high-end custom homes, Cauchi says. It would be cost-prohibitive for Mattamy to hire people to spray foam in site-built homes, but the prefabricated panels used in the plant are cheaper. Fewer wall studs and tightly controlling waste mean the Stelumar homes use 25 per cent less lumber. Over the factory’s four-year life span, producing 800 to 900 homes, an estimated 40-hectare woodlot will be saved, Cauchi says.

When Hawthorne Village is finished, the factory will be recycled, disassembled, then set up at another Mattamy site.

Several such factories are in future Mattamy plans, though locations have not yet been announced. Cauchi says they will be large sites with hundreds of lots.

All Hawthorne Village homes are built to Energy Star standard. “In fact, these are better insulated than Energy Star,” he says.

BY THE NUMBERS

220
Number of houses the Mattamy factory can produce annually. Ten are in production at any one time, with one new house produced every 11 days.

76,000
Factory size in square feet.

115
Employees at the plant.

70
Number of days shaved off conventional site building.

1
Kilometre between factory and building lots.

600,000
Weight in pounds of a fully loaded production line.

25
Percentage of lumber saved over site-built homes, due to tight control of waste and reduced need for wall studs.

5
Similar plants Mattamy is considering for the GTA over the next five years. Milton plant will be disassembled and moved to a new site.

Written By: Tracy Hanes of the Toronto Star

A recycling plant that’s key to Toronto’s new garbage strategy has closed unexpectedly, throwing part of the city’s ambitious trash diversion plans into limbo.

The Canadian Polystyrene Recycling Association in Mississauga announced it was suspending operations just two weeks after Toronto began rolling out its mega blue bins.

The large-capacity blue boxes were purchased to accommodate the addition of polystyrene and plastic bags to the residential recycling program next fall. All Toronto homes will have one by spring.

The closing has also sent Peel Region and Hamilton, which already recycle these materials, scrambling to find alternatives. These plastics may end up being sent to landfills.

Foamed polystyrene, a plastic resin, is used for food containers and packaging electronic equipment.

While the total weight of polystyrene tossed out by GTA residents is small, the volume is huge. One kilogram of polystyrene packaging fills more than two household garbage bins. Hamilton collects about 3,000 kilograms a year.

The plant, the only recycler in the province big enough to take Toronto’s expected volume of polystyrene, had just invested $300,000 in state-of-the-art sorting equipment. But in a statement, the company cited declining revenues as the reason operations were halted.

“Our polystyrene market just went south,” said Steve Whitter, Toronto’s director of transfer, processing and disposal of solid waste. “Obviously it’s a setback.

“When Toronto gets into something like film plastic or polystyrene, they will very quickly swallow up all the available capacity that’s in the marketplace because we’re just so much bigger than everyone else.”

For now, the city intends to accept polystyrene and seek another market. “Normally, there’s a backup,” said Whitter. “Someone comes out of the woodwork who’s interested in taking the material if there’s a need, and there’s clearly a need.”

The closed plant has been recycling Peel’s polystyrene for years.

Its failure is “indicative of the whole issue” of plastics recycling, said Andy Pollack, Peel’s director of waste management. He said companies should only use plastic packaging if they can ensure markets are in place to recycle it. Last year, only 20 per cent of Ontario’s plastic packaging was recycled.

“Municipalities are at the end of the line. We have to manage what packagers and retailers decide to use so we’re constantly trying to figure out – out of all this plastic packaging – what is recyclable and what’s not,” he said. “It’s a big challenge for us.”

Cities can’t add items to the blue box mix that don’t have a market at the other end. “Someone out there has to say, `I’m a company that recycles plastic and I’m willing to take this type of plastic.’”

In two years, Michigan’s landfills will close to Ontario garbage, and all regions need to grapple now with ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Forty to 50 per cent of all waste in the GTA, including organics, yard waste and recyclables, is diverted from landfills, but municipalities hope to increase that to 60 to 70 per cent in a few years.

Toronto has an ambitious diversion plan underpinned, ironically, by its purchase of a landfill near St. Thomas, Ont. – an investment that clarified for city officials how important it is to keep waste in check.

“If we simply continue to use (the St. Thomas landfill) at the current rate, it will fill up by 2024,” said solid-waste manager Geoff Rathbone. With the new diversion plan, the city can use the landfill it bought for $220 million for another 10 years, until 2034.

That’s why the city wanted to add high-volume polystyrene and bags to its program in the first place. “We’re given a certain number of million cubic metres to fill, and then it’s full,” Rathbone said.

The city is also introducing a pay-as-you-go plan that will force residents who put out bigger volumes of garbage to pay more. It plans to build two new processing centres for organics, six new reuse centres and a mixed-waste processing plant. The project, still in its infancy, would treat waste to reduce it before it goes to landfill.

Not everyone is ready to follow. Durham officials considered building a mixed-waste processing plant, but a tour of a Dutch operation convinced them otherwise.

“Think of breaking open bags of garbage and then spinning them around, trying to extract the odd bits and pieces that might be recyclable,” said works commissioner Clifford Curtis. “It’s almost an inhuman place to work. We went in and we might as well have thrown our clothes away when we got out. The smell got in everything.”

Curtis also has had doubts about adding plastic bags and foam to Durham’s blue box program.

“There are just some things that we can’t recycle because there is no market for it, such as plastic film and polystyrene foam,” he said. The bags are used to make plastic lumber, but “it’s a really, really thin market and it’s not stable,” he said.

The two items are also difficult to sort at the recycling plant. Foam breaks up easily and often clings to other material because of its static properties, while bags fly around and are difficult to pull manually from fast-moving conveyor belts.

Though Peel has been taking plastic bags for years, the region is starting a campaign to persuade residents not to put loose bags into the box. In plants with automated machinery, the bags get wrapped around anything that is spinning, so they’re a constant maintenance issue, said Pollack, who would like to see retailers collect bags instead.

Despite the challenges, Curtis thinks the next two years will be “a time of great opportunity.”

“People are finally grasping the concept that we can’t keep throwing our garbage into the ground and they are trying to divert to save resources. And people are willing to pay a premium to do that,” he said.

“They are trying to do the right thing. I think that’s very encouraging.”

RECYCLING ACROSS THE GTA: PLANS BY REGION

Peel Region

Has a 20-year contract with Algonquin Power in Brampton, the only residential waste incinerator in the province. The privately owned company incinerates half its garbage, with the remainder currently going to the Pine Tree Acres landfill in Michigan. Once that’s closed, the region’s garbage will go to Warwick Landfill near Sarnia, Ont. An environmental assessment approved the landfill’s expansion. Its use is still waiting on a certificate of approval, which should come in the next two years.

Halton Region

Hopes to reach 60 per cent diversion by 2010. Increased diversion rates will extend the life of the Milton landfill by seven years, until 2030.

In April, it will add a green cart program for food waste. Blue box collection will change from every two weeks to weekly. Garbage collection will change from weekly to every other week.

Durham Region

The region wants to build an energy-from-waste facility, similar to Algonquin Power in Brampton, which incinerates half of Peel’s garbage and creates electricity. The proposal, slated for a site in Clarington, Ont., near Oshawa, is undergoing environmental assessment. “It’s theoretically possible, if everything goes right, to be ready by 2010,” says Clifford Curtis, works commissioner in Durham Region.

York Region

The region is building a plant in Vaughan that will turn garbage into energy pellets, which Andy Campbell, York’s director of waste management, says look like dense goose droppings. The pellets can be burned in boilers, approved for use in Ontario greenhouses.

The region is also investing in Durham Region’s proposal for an energy-from-waste plant.

Written by Patti Winsa of the Toronto Star

When even a relatively successful operator has had it, you know Ontario agriculture is in big trouble

There’s something new growing in Bert Andrews’ field, in front of the patch of long-wilted rhubarb and the wispy, overgrown asparagus.

“For Sale/Lease, By Owner” reads the giant white sign, “Growing Farm Business, Winery and Farm Property. ”

After 27 seasons, Andrews’ Scenic Acre, on the outskirts of Milton, is going the way most farms in the area have gone – out of business.

Not because it hasn’t been profitable – this past season has been Andrews’ best to date. But he had open-heart surgery last year, and none of his children wants to take over the operation.

“I’m 64 years old – I want my Sundays off,” Andrews says on a warm fall afternoon, looking out at his fields and the russet-coloured Niagara Escarpment in the distance. The heads of his towering Russian sunflowers have long turned black and now curl downward. The last of his pumpkins have been sold. And the haystack, which visiting schoolchildren jumped on until last week, will soon be dismantled – perhaps for the last time.

It’s the end of an era, not just for Andrews, but also for agriculture in the Toronto area.This is the best farmland in the country. But we’re quickly paving it over. The Greater Toronto Area – including Durham, Halton, Peel and York regions – lost 16 per cent of its farms between 1996 and 2001. Since then, another five per cent have disappeared.

There’s a sign nailed beside the door of Andrews’ barn that reads: “Farmers Feed Cities.” It should say: “Cities Eat Farms.”

Up to 80 per cent of the produce we buy travels thousands of kilometres by truck or plane. Even apples – which are quintessentially Ontarian and can keep in cold storage for months – travel 5,900 kilometres on average to get to us, according to a recent Region of Waterloo Health study.

Contrary to what one might think given how much of our food is imported, Canadians spend less of their disposable income on nourishment – about 10 per cent on food and non-alcoholic beverages, according to the OECD – than residents of most other developed countries. A related fact: domestic farmers make less than half of what Toronto garbage collectors earn. (The average farm earns less than $25,000 a year before expenses, according to the latest census report.)

The profession’s self-esteem is in the gutter. As Andrews regularly points out, Ontario agriculture minister was once a plum posting. Now, it’s an afterthought, rarely noted in reports about cabinet shuffles, because it’s no longer considered a powerful portfolio, even though it’s the only ministry that touches all of us many times daily.

Faced with a future of long hours, little respect and less pay, is it surprising that young farmers are leaving the land in droves?

Despite the growing local food movement, most farmers and food policy wonks agree: the future of Ontario farming is bleak. Most predict it will take a horrific event like 9/11 to wake us up to the dangers of relying entirely on foreign food.

“I have a three-month-old granddaughter, and I don’t want her to be hungry in her lifetime,” says Mike Shook, program manager with FarmStart, a Guelph-area non-profit aiming to get more farmers on the land. “If we keep in the direction we are, I fear she will be.”

Many urge the government to take action before it’s too late. The Greenbelt – which protects 720,000 hectares of land circling Toronto from development– is a start, they say. But protecting land is one thing; ensuring that food grows on it is another. Horse farms are the second fastest-growing agricultural category in the Toronto area, after cash crops like winter wheat, according to the last census.

“We need a master plan,” says Andrews.

He remains among the small minority of optimists. How else would he have survived almost three decades of farming near Milton, the fastest growing municipality in the country, as subdivisions and golf ranges replaced the fields he once ploughed?

The ultimate proof: he hopes to sell his property to a farmer.

“There are people who think I don’t have a hope in hell,” he chuckles. “But I’ve been hearing that all my life.”

To an outsider, Andrews’ Scenic Acres seems one of the most successful farms around. The 39-hectare property bursts with blackberries, pumpkins, strawberries … as well as 17,000 bottles of fruit wine a year. Andrews runs a bustling market out of one of his barns and sends his produce out to eight farmers’ markets every week.

More than 15,000 school children tour his farm each summer. And far more than that come out, mostly on weekends, to pet his goats and ride a tractor out to the fields to pick their own food. One Sunday this fall, a record 3,300 people swarmed the farm to pick pumpkins. For many city slickers, such “entertainment farms” have become their only connection to rural life.

No matter how successful and cherished Andrews’ Scenic Acres may be, is it realistic to think a farmer will buy it when speculators are scooping up property all around Andrews? Nearby farmland inside the Greenbelt is going for $20,000 an acre – a price most farmers could never afford. Farms like his that fall outside the Greenbelt border are running at $50,000 an acre. Which means only a Rosedale stockbroker would have the necessary cash.

That’s exactly who Andrews is banking on – “It would have to be somebody who had passion.”

Wayne Roberts, project co-ordinator for the Toronto Food Policy Council, has a different buyer in mind: the Ontario government. “That’s obvious to anyone concerned with the future of food security in Ontario,” he says. Not only would the province save the most productive land from being stripped of its topsoil and converted to homes and malls, but it could also boost aspiring farmers into the business by renting out small acreages to them at affordable prices – he calls them “farm condominiums.”

“Once land is changed from agriculture into something else,” he says, “it’s almost impossible to reclaim. If this farm goes, it’s not late – it’s too late.”

By Catherine Porter, Environment Reporter for the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

The Region of Halton recently announced that it was going forward with a Green Cart Program to help reduce the amount of waste that heads to our landfill site. In case people are unaware of where that landfill site is, take a trip down 25 (Bronte Road) south of Derry and you will soon see it.

There was quite the discussion during the last municipal election on what should be done with the landfill, which is quickly approaching capacity. With the hundreds and hundreds of new homes being built in the area there will be a further demand on that landfill and it’s up to us as residents to do our part.

The Region of Halton currently has the Blue Box program in place. You are to put glass, plastics etc. in one box and in the other we place the acceptable paper products, boxes, etc. As of April 2008 it was announced that residents will be able to put all products into one box instead of separating it, given the improvement in the separation technology available.

During that campaign a debate raged on about the EFW (Energy From Waste) proposal that was put before Regional Council and the pros and cons involved. In essence, an incinerator would be built at the landfill and the waste would then be burned using clean technology to produce energy that would be used in the region of Halton and beyond. Coupled with this proposal, there was the much maligned Pristine Power Plant issue that seemed to dominate the last half of the campaign…

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