File: TTInterviewA03262015
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[Music]

Q: Tell me about

how everything started? A: Everything to do

with the mega quarry was rather

fascinating.

So this tremendous stretch of land,

just an hour and a bit north of the city,

is home to about

15-16,000 acres of soil that can really

grow

every kind of crop humans want to grow

and eat.

So it's really special in many ways and

in 2006 and 2007 a US hedge fund

bought a lot of land and

the short and the long of the story is

that they wanted to build Ontario's,

Canada's second largest open pit mine

under that soil

and people took objection to that.

Q: Okay so what did, what did your community

do?

A: Well like every other community was

faced with really life-altering

proposals of any kind,

we got together elected the board they

did the research.

We learned more about the land and the

limestone underneath it. We learned that

it's home to

water that feeds you know a million

people south of us

and in the end,

got the discussion started that society

has to make a choice.

And the choice being, do you want to

preserve your options of growing your

own food or will you just let a hedge

fund

raid those sort of perpetual resources?

And in the end

the drive was to stop the application

and

part two of that two pronged approach

was to change policies so that these

crazy strictly vulture type

applications just can't happen again. Q: So

tell me about end act

and what you guys did specifically to

stop the mega quarry?

A: Well first thing is, we knew that the

mega quarry might get grandfathered

under any policy change

but the point is there needed to be a

better decision-making process on how to

approve those kind of things.

Most of the policy you live with today

you know was written 30, 40, 50 years ago

and was never designed to handle a hedge

fund proposal from out of the country.

And part two of that was to preserve the

land.

So to get part one done, public awareness

was just a huge thing.

We're so grateful to student bodies at a

number of universities in in this

province. From Waterloo to

Osgoode Law School,  Ryerson, OCAD, who put

just tremendous talent into research and

helping to build the awareness

on how important this really all was, how

important of a discussion it was, and in

the end

you know they take the credit and they

should take the credit for defeating

this crazy thing.

Big thanks goes to David Suzuki

Foundation. Big thanks goes to the

Canadian Chefs Congress.

They all helped with food stock. If you

know, Google it and see it and how a

community of

two and a half thousand people had 28

000 people for dinner.

Was just a once in Canadian history

deal and we're very proud to have hosted

it, participated in it,

and the year after it was soup stock

here in the beaches put on by the

Canadian Chefs Congress and the David

Suzuki Foundation and

you know drew 40 000 people unbelievable.

Q: So now,

when the highlands company withdrew

their application,

what happened then? A: Well generally when

groups get going and they

win they quit, and a big part for act was

right from the very get-go

to say unless policy has changed we

haven't really

done a lot because two years down the

road someone else can pick up the ball

and do the whole thing again.

So policy change was a big deal and we

had a great little celebration in

Honeywood in the February after the

Highlands Company withdrew their

application

and launched the food and water first

campaign which is supported by thousands

and thousands of people.

Part of the reason that I'm going to ask

you when we're done here is, to log on to

food and water first dot com

and take the pledge. Numbers at Queen's

Park matter

absolutely in any decision-making

process and the more pledges we can

collect to push

farmland preservation issues forward is

is a great thing.

Timing is opportune right now because

the greenbelt is under review, the

Niagara scorpion plan is under

review, and we have learned so much in

this whole process that

the numbers now back up what a lot of

people have been saying.

We don't need to push more urban sprawl.

The province already has a fairly

celebrated growth plan.

There is some 800 000 available lots

within

the greater golden horseshoe area to

be developed, so let's develop that first

or a good percentage of it and then

drive on and see where

society is 25 or 30 years from now.  Q: Thank

you very much.

carl