Say goodbye to Canada’s previously admired standard of living. We’re being sold out to real estate developers by our elected officials, and there is nothing we seem to be capable of doing to slow it down.

The obliviousness with which governments in Canada enact foolish policy to, at all costs, protect the momentum of the real estate development industry is embarrassing. With 1.05 million new immigrants, Canada’s population is now above 40 million, and the media hypes the resulting housing “crisis” as our biggest concern.

Doug Ford, now historically noted as a would-be saboteur of public health care, education and greenbelt protection, is now trying to add farmland to his list of catastrophes.

Apparently oblivious to the economic drivers of supply and demand, Doug seems incapable of understanding the outrage of the agricultural community in response to his proposal to develop farmland for housing.

The simplest and most glaring trainwreck of thought that evidently rules the Ford government is the insanity of removing farmland for housing we will need to feed Ontario’s portion of the new immigration tally.

If you build 1.5 million new homes at the cost of prime agricultural land, you are directly ensuring the rise in cost of feeding the new inhabitants of those homes, and the rest of Ontarians.

Besides driving up the price of agricultural land for farmers who must now compete with speculators thanks to the apparent willingness of the Ontario government to sacrifice food security for one time real estate wins for his buddies, Ford has placed the future of Ontario’s food supply firmly in the hands of the largest grocery store chains who import the bulk of their produce because Canada doesn’t produce enough to fill the shelves.

I’m an organic regenerative farmer who is interested adding more land to my 28 acres so I can grow more food for Ontaio families. But the parcel of land I’ve had my eye on for the last three years has just soared out of reach, thanks to the entry of international land speculators/depvelopers into the demand side of the equation as a result of these policies.

Farmland in Haldimand Country was averaging roughly $15,000 an acre.

But since Ford announced is willingness to sell the farmland out from under Ontario families, the price is now hovering closer to almost $25,000 an acre. That increased land cost will be directly contributing to the continued inflation of food prices in the future.

The current phase of humanity’s rush to transform the Earth into a synthetic skeleton is the last phase of humanity’s dominance at the top of the evolutionary food chain.

Among the features of a Darwinist ‘survival of the fittest’ mantra is the ability of a species to know when the current behavioural trajectory has veered into the self-destructive.

But, alas, that would require consciousness. And in the current climate of obsession with the pursuit of wealth and influence, that consciousness remains disproportionately suppressed.

About the Author

James West is the founder of the Real Economic Society and author of the Real Economist. He is an unaccredited ecologist, economist, and organic regenerative farmer seeking to reorient the values of humanity toward a rehabilitative and symbiotic mode of existence on Earth.

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