The Rural Voice, 1978-06, Page 3HOEGY
FARM SUPPLY LTD.
Brodhagen, Ontario
Tel. 345-2941
After hours 345-2243
*BARN WASHING
AND DISINFECTING
Spraying with CARBOLA
whitens and disinfects as it dries
*CATTLE SPRAYING
For Lice and
warble control.
•Seaforth
•Brodhagen
•Dublin
Mitchell
Opinion
It's a sad tale of the record of government action toward
farmers that farmers immediately think the worst of any
government move these days.
When Ontario Hydro, a government body that gains some of
the strongest suspicions from farmers, did a survey recently,
some farmers felt it was a scare tactic on the part of Hydro to
convince farmers that if they didn't alter their policy against
Hydro generating stations in farming areas, the province would
run short of electricity. When the Ontario Federation of
Agriculture approved a policy that went along with the
government's proposal to make farmland tax exempt, many
farmers most notably in Huron, rebelled. They felt the policy was
a trick to give the government a foothold which would someday
be used to turn all farmland into public property.
Whether these fears are justified or just paranoid reaction
doesn't really matter here. What matters is that farmers are so
distrustful of government that it is nearly impossible for them to
believe anything the government says.
This distrust has been well earned. The government has been
so sneaky in its actions on such things as education reform and
attempts to bring in regional government that they have put
farmers, and rural people in general, on constant alert as to
possible ulterior motives to any action. The tale of deceit on the
part of Ontario Hydro is so long that no farmer will trust anything
the utility says for the next generation.
Maybe the government in these actions is being fair and
honest but who can tell. It's a sad state of affairs when farmers
react negatively to anything proposed because of distrust. The
government has a lot of repair work to do if it wants to mend
these fences.
the rural
Voice
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THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1978. PG. 3.