The Citizen, 2019-04-25, Page 10PAGE 10. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2019.
THE EDITOR,
I have been following with great
interest the comments about Huron
County’s Natural Heritage Plan.
My husband and I attended an
open house a couple of years ago
when the improvements to the
county mapping were unveiled. I
was involved in my local municipal
council when the secondary plan
was implemented and have been
attentive to the reviews over the
years.
In every secondary plan there are
areas designated as urban, farmland
and natural environment. Natural
environment areas are shoreline
areas, wetlands, rivers and buffer
areas and land not suitable for
farming that has been allowed to
generate naturally.
We can always learn new ideas.
Identifying watersheds as complete
systems as opposed to looking at
piecemeal areas makes more sense.
These are natural heritage systems.
With modern improved mapping we
can more accurately pinpoint these
areas. So what is the problem?
Last month a group called the
Huron Group addressed Huron
County Council to request an
economic study into the impact of
the Natural Heritage Plan. Their
concerns were centred on farmers
being forced to give up land and
reduce food production in Ontario’s
most productive area.
I would like to point out that more
land is being farmed today than 20
years ago and at a price. Old farms
were bought, buildings bulldozed
and land opened up for farming.
Small land severances would help
stop the depopulating of rural
Ontario but that is another topic. Our
grandparents understood the value
of 20 acres of woodlot on the back of
their farms. Simple basic farming
practices along drainage systems
and water ways, as well as sturdy
buffer zones, would go a long way in
improving the environment.
A couple of years ago I was taking
photos at the Little Lakes and was
shocked to see corn planted right to
the edge of the north slope of the
ponds. No buffer honoured there,
and on a steep slope, runoff was a
given.
Natural environment does not
stand alone and, combined with
well-managed farmland, creates a
productive combination. Farmland
without water is nothing. In times of
irregular rainfall patterns, farmers
who set up retention ponds are
farmers of the future.
What I am seeing are numerous
municipal drains across farms
cleaned out with high hoes, all the
vegetation stripped back leaving a
THE EDITOR,
Dear Premier Doug Ford and
Education Minister Lisa
Thompson:
I am a resident of Huron-Bruce, a
parent to children who will soon be
entering the school system, a
supporter of excellence in (and free
access to) education, a survivor of
the Mike Harris cuts to education in
the 1990s, a millennial who has
spent the last decade precariously
employed, an avid observer of
politics and a proud Ontarian who
(until today) has never felt the need
to write a letter to a politician. You
see, I know you won’t read this and,
until today, that fact mattered to me.
Until today, I lodged my opinions
and complaints with my friends and
family, through my right to vote, and
through my involvement with causes
that matter to me and my
community. But now I am so
burning mad that I feel forced to
spend valuable time away from
working, away from caring for my
children, away from focusing my
energy on improving the lives of the
people in my immediate community
to write a letter that will, I am sure,
land on deaf ears.
Over the last few months I have
watched in horror as your
government has slashed and burned
an education system that was slowly
rebuilt after the last Conservative
government did the same thing 20
years ago. I lived through teachers’
strikes, entire semesters where my
classes didn’t have textbooks to
follow, and then the double cohort
where fully twice as many students
flooded post-secondary institutions
and later the job market to compete
for livelihoods that we hoped would
support us and the families we
wanted to have. Into this void flowed
a recession, years of precarious
employment, market uncertainty and
financial insecurity. My generation
has held off buying houses, having
children and investing in retirement,
not because we’re lazy and
irresponsible, but because we simply
cannot afford to. I moved out of a
large urban centre so that I could
some day have a hope of starting my
own family. And now that I have,
your government is making cuts and
wreaking havoc on the institutions
that will most affect my children’s
generation: cutting funding for kids
with special needs, scrapping sex-ed
curriculum and Indigenous content
in courses, and firing the teachers
who work so hard to create an
environment conducive to learning
and growth.
Shame on you for not doing your
homework on the infinite benefits to
students and schools when these
programs thrive. Shame on you for
your callous lack of compassion for
the most vulnerable members of our
society. Shame on you for your
carelessness with the lives and
incomes of so many teachers and
support staff. But most of all, shame
on you for taking away the caring
and compassionate adults who
would have helped shape my
children’s education, their view of
the world, their passions and
interests, and their ability to stretch
and grow beyond what I am able to
teach them at home.
I had many friends in high school
who only attended school (and
maybe even only got their OSSD)
because of the availability of the
kinds of courses that will surely be
axed in this round of cuts: arts,
technology and elective courses.
These kids were bright, engaged and
lit up by the opportunities available
to them outside the three Rs.
Each student has unique needs and
interests and the diversity of the
modern school should foster an
individual’s abilities. Harkening
back to the dark ages of education in
order to pander to an imagined
electorate who believe that all
learning can be graded and
measured means that the
opportunities for creativity,
ingenuity and imagination will be
lost. These skills are vital to an
individual’s life-long happiness and
they also happen to be the very
things that employers everywhere
are desperately seeking. In the case
of the students who do not thrive in
the typical classroom, I am
absolutely certain that having access
to the alternative programming that
allows them to complete high school
and then move on to other
opportunities will mean that they are
assets to their communities and able
to achieve things that neither you nor
I could ever dream up.
Please reverse the cuts you’ve
made to education for the sake of our
kids, our communities and our
province. Otherwise, I fear we will
have another decade in education
lost to confusion and narrow
thinking. The children of Ontario
deserve the best education we can
provide them and that education
comes directly from caring and
compassionate adults who foster
growth and development.
Funnily enough, there is a whole
crop of people who fit that bill,
waiting to step in and fill those roles.
You just have to hire them back so
they can get down to doing what
they are absolutely expert in:
teaching.
Sincerely,
Britt Gregg-Wallace, Goderich.
Reverse education cuts: writer
Writer urges farmers to work alongside nature
A great season
The Blyth Brussels Minor Hockey Association season ended as winter turned to spring and
the organization handed out its annual year-end awards, honouring a number of local hockey
players for great seasons. Winning the Tom Schauber Memorial Award this year were, from
left: Hailey Beuermann from the Atom Rep Crusaders, Liam Fischer of the Atom Local League
Black Crusaders and Cole Mason of the Atom Local League Burgundy Crusaders. Presenting
the awards was Ashley Bromley of the association. (Photo submitted)
NOTICE TO DOG OWNERS
in the Municipality of
Morris-Turnberry
2019 Dog Tags and Licences are now available:
(Monday to Thursday 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
and Fridays 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.)
at the Municipality of Morris-Turnberry Municipal Office
41342 Morris Rd., PO Box 310,
Brussels, ON N0G 1H0
All dogs must be licensed in compliance with By-law No. 80-2013.
A copy of the complete By-law is available for review at the
Municipal Office.
All dogs must be identified by means of a tag and licence, issued
for a (1) one year period by:
Friday, April 26, 2019
The fee schedule shall be as follows:
1.All Dogs (except those listed in #2)
- male, females and spayed females
FIRST DOG $20.00 per dog
ALL OTHERS $30.00 per dog
2.Pit bulls, Pit bull crosses, Staffordshire terriers
FIRST DOG $100.00 per dog
ALL OTHERS $110.00 per dog
3.Kennel Licence Fee $125.00
(for a kennel of dogs that are registered or
eligible for registration under the Animal Pedigree Act)
4.Late Payment Charge $20.00 per dog
(Shall be assessed in addition to the licence fee,
if the licence and/or tag is not purchased by April 26th)
Excrement:
The By-law requires dog owners to forthwith remove excrement
left by a dog, from property other than the premises of the owner
of the dog.
Any person contravening this provision is subject to a $125 fee.
For further information contact:
The Municipality of Morris-Turnberry
Telephone: 519-887-6137 Ext. 24
Fax: 519-887-6424
E-mail: mail@morristurnberry.ca
*** Tags can be picked up in person or
ordered by telephone ***
Letters to the Editor
Continued on page 11