After bulldozing community and parkland to build the Dwight Road expressway, then-Premier Wynne’s predecessor and the “Prince of Pot” cannabis entrepreneur, Bill Morneau, told our producers a highway would never really happen.
Doug Ford claims this project will finally spur economic growth in Peel Region and on the border of Ontario and U.S. I agree that would be great. But a cause of that growth, they say, is the clearance of the 270,000 acre-plus farm that’s hogging 70 per cent of one of the last open spaces in the country.
It sounds like a land grab and it’s an ongoing land grab for developers. It’s not. It’s good business for farmers. It will clean up the land. It will protect water and wildlife, including the Canadian bald eagle. It will let folks in the United States drive from Pembroke to Haldimand, an epic trip that currently requires a land border crossing. It is good for business, good for farmers, but also, it’s been estimated that it’s going to generate as much as 15,000 new jobs.
Doug Ford’s decision to bulldoze everyone is not only an affront to human decency and human history. It’s also bad policy. Politicians have no business infringing on private property rights in order to make money for developers. Doug Ford had better give Peel Region a document that spells out what exactly it’s going to be using the extra farms for so he won’t be on court for a long time.
From the editor and reporter covering Doug Ford