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Contents
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Transcripts of Speeches, Questions and Answers
ARUNDEL NATURAL
SCIENCE CENTRE
Your Invitation
to the Community Conference
FRIDAY
evening, October 17 & SATURDAY, October 18, 2003
Arundel
Natural Science Centre
96 CRYSTAL FALLS ROAD
ARUNDEL QC
J0T 1A0 9 km north
of Arundel on route 327 to St-Jovite Mont-Tremblant planArundel is funded
in part by the Agricultural Rural Minority Community Planning
Initiative that
has been allocated funding from Agriculture and Agri-Food’s Canadian
Agricultural Rural Communities Initiative (CARCI) and Canada Heritage’s
Interdepartmental Partnership of Official Language Communities (IPOLC). The Municipal Council of
Arundel invites you to participate in this
community conference. Everyone’s
ideas are important to the plan of our future and your participation is
necessary.
Friday at 7 p.m. – Registration
and Information 7:30 p.m., Dr. John Henning of McGill, Department
Chairman and Director of Ecological Agriculture Projects. Dr. Henning
will
answer some of our questions and provide us with a base for our
deliberations
about our future. Saturday, October 18, at 9
a.m. GENERAL MEETING for
everyone to hear the resolutions, proposals, and opinions collected by
the
focus groups. And during the rest of the
day, workshops, forums, discussions on various pertinent matters. 11:00 a.m. Saturday, Phil Arbor, organic farmer and owner
of an
art gallery and a community activist who has worked at development in
Van Kleek
Hill will speak about his experience in that community. 1:00 p.m. Dr. Jonathan Morgan will lead a
forum on biological threats. 2:30 p.m. Art Critic and
Writer, John Grande, will
speak on outdoor sculpture. And, there will be others
to
register your questions, discuss issues, and to inform you about the
steps of
the strategic plan. Through the work of this conference, the
workshops and study, the ideas and discoveries of the focus groups will
begin
to take on a useful form for the preparation of the preliminary report
and this
will lead to the strategic plan, which will guide future community
development. |
The
Community Conference
Opening
of Conference
Johanna Earle welcomes participants, acknowledges various contributions and the funding provided by Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada for 25000 $ matching funds grant.
Councillors present: Johanna Earle, Ron Cooke, Norman Graham
Ron Cooke introduces Dr. John Henning of McGill (see references above.)
b. Niagara Falls, University of Guelph, 1985 to McGill, focus on organic farming at McGill, national and international level to develop standards for organic agriculture; lives in East Hawkesbury in an old farmhouse near the Ottawa River, “the house where the famous murders took place,” the farm of Ruggles Cooke, probably ancestors of the Arundel Cookes.
Dr. John
Henning
Thank you, Ron.
What’s happening in the agricultural sector in the past century or two?
Why are communities going through the process of strategic planning?
What do we want to change?
What are they willing to contribute?
Why is this important?
Why are you wanting to do this?
For you? For next generation?
I (John Henning) come from a family background in farming- Niagara, Ontario and Saskatchewan, 1918-1948, wheat, rape seed (canola); where 5 families on a quarter-section (160 A.); which by 1982 was a ghost town through farm consolidations which took place after 1945.
In Canada, 1920 about 700,000 farms in Canada, now down to about 200,000.
Typical farm operates on about 3000 acres now.
Hawkesbury farmer John Kirby asks, “How big do we have to get?”
What do all farmers need to do to be sustainable?
To make family farms viable, the farmer needs to get beyond just producing basic agricultural commodities to engage in marketing and distribution.
To keep smaller farms viable, we face the same issues as you do here.
Outsiders. Local is “been here for three or four generations.”
Sometimes there are conflicts between old timers and new arrivals. Disputes about smells, noise … The community needs to find ways to solve these problems.
What to do if you want to preserve smaller farms?
Newcomers, Heinsel family, Austrians, are biodynamic organic farmers, dairy farmers. Difference between their operations and the traditional, old timers: the Austrians process the milk into yoghurt on the farm and distribute it. They are happy with the scale of operations.
Difference between the operations: The Kirbys sell the raw milk at 0.50 $ a litre; the Heinsels sell the milk as yoghurt at 2.25 $ a litre.
What are you about at this conference? Strategic planning. Trying to figure out where you are going for the next few years. Strategic planning takes a long, long time.
A study in 1972 predicted that by 1980, 10 % of agriculture would be organic. Now, in 2003, less than 1 % are organic. The process may extend belong the lifetimes of those who are participating now. That means that it is important to get youth involved now.
When you look around the room at a gathering of organic farmers, you see a lot of young people.
National gathering of organic farmers at Guelph University now involves 1200 registrants, Wednesday through Sunday.
http://www.guelphorganicconf.ca/friday1.html
GUELPH ORGANIC CONFERENCE
A leading
annual North American
organic agricultural event
Your
Mid-winter Organic Experience
"Building
Sustainable Economies"
January
22-25, 2004
University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Age demographic for organic farmers is very different; they tend to be younger.
Study Agricultural census of 2001 for demographics.
The organic farming industry is drawing people from other walks of life, from the city population, starting up smaller scale farms.
We need to get younger people involved, especially get them involved in the activities to maintain, improve and develop the place.
You need to find allies from outside the community.
Stuart (?) Hill’s strategy, “adopt a politician.” Adopt them early; educate them about your objectives, your needs.
You need to use a problem solving strategy.
Pass out pamphlet about problem solving.
- What is the problem? (see the cartoon.)
- Isolate the problem. Research the problem.
- Solve the problem.
Deceptive, band-aid, solution. Pest, weed, control.
Dimensions of the problem. Overwhelming complexities.
Understanding, insight, seeing the key issues: profound simplicity.
The best explanations are often the simplest- profound simplicity.
Using a simpler theory preferred over more complex theories.
Strategic Questioning for Problem Solving
Process of asking questions about the nature of the situation, asking the people involved what is going on to try to come up with a vision.
Systemic problems: e.g. process of creation of bigger and bigger farms is driven by a number of factors. Why do the problems arise?
Greater agricultural productivity is accompanied by falling prices- up during wars, down at other times, demand increasing slower than production. To revitalize the community you have to take these systemic trends into account.
To develop community solutions, individuals have to ask themselves some questions.
No. 6 is an important one. “How much time do I have? How much can I do?” You do not have to be fully engaged? “What is the smallest contribution you can make?”
What is the small step that I can take and make a contribution here?
Get people to contribute in small steps.
Do I really want it to change?
That’s the process that Stuart has laid out? Perhaps something you might try.
What has to be done to keep a local farming community alive?
What is the potential for organic agriculture? Is supporting organic agriculture in this area one strategy that might make it all work? Many communities are considering this strategy.
Realities that need to be considered
The way that large scale, commercial, agriculture has been developing is not going to change in the near future. I am convinced of that.
Commercial farms are going to continue to get bigger; they are going to continue to swallow their neighbours. Economies of scale are important in agriculture. As you get bigger, you can produce cheaper. That’s what happening in the States, in Europe, here. Farms are going to continue to get larger; prices are going to continue to go down and that’s going to perpetuate the drive to get bigger and keep commercial agriculture going.
Another trend, a systemic trend, how lifestyles are evolving in urban areas and not so urban areas. One is where people are buying their food and where they are eating it. More and more people are eating outside the home, in restaurants, hospitals, whatever. In the U.S. 50 % of the food purchased is being cooked and eaten at home; the other 50 % is purchased for consumption outside the home.
We are a little behind that in Canada but the trend is the same.
That does not include the purchase of food, which has been pre-prepared.
Tracking sales of food to be eaten in cars … about 6 % of food purchased is to be eaten in the car … in some American cities, many apartments being rented do not have kitchens … they may have a mini fridge, a microwave … working more, less food preparation at home …the share of the dollar that consumers are spending that goes to the farmer is becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller over time …
Mainstream commercial agriculture is going to continue to get bigger, continue to industrialise. Food processors are doing the same thing and this has implications for areas like this …
Schneider’s prepared meats, heritage brand, bought by US firm, Smithfield Farms, sold to a Canadian firm, Maple Leaf, a feed milling company reborn as a food processor … one of the things Maple Leaf does is slaughter and process hogs and they are now running the largest operation in Canada … now Maple Leaf is the only game in town … Smithfield announced the sale of Schneider’s to Maple Leaf and that it (Smithfield) that it had bought an American company in receivership, Farmland … the deals made a lot of sense because Maple Leaf got some good market positioning in Canada and Smithfield got some very good positioning in the US … about 27 % of the market, not the best news for farmers, the slaughtering house can effect a downward price pressure … for farmers in relatively remote areas, other considerations enter with negative effects for the producer … food quality regulation often has a negative effect (increase in production costs) for the small processors … so, they close and people in the outlying areas have more costs to market what they produce …
Marketing function: whatever happens between the farm and the consumer- processing, storage
Ag-food systems is about a 100 billion, the farm figure is about 28 billion … varies with produce … grain sold at the farm vs. the price of a box of Wheaties … the farm gate value of the wheat is about 5 % of the price of the Wheaties … with Tiger Woods on the front panel, he got about 15 cents a box … stark, 8 cents for the farmer; 15 for Tiger …
How might you promote small-scale agriculture in this community?
How might you disconnect the community from commercial agriculture?
Which means, starting internalised small-scale farms within the community, which is to say, in other words, sorting out how you are going to consume more of the product locally, without trying to compete in that larger market out there, compete with very, very large farms which have very large cost advantage compared to a small farm. But if a local market is developed, either through farmers’ markets or cooperatives of some sort, either on the production side or the consumer side, you can work for both sides, the consumer and the producer. The solution: means have to be found to consume more of that product locally.
I want to tell you about a very successful attempt to do this, which is being run out of a non-government organisation in Montreal, known as Équiterre. Équiterre has networked farms which are practicing what is known as c.s.a, “community supported agriculture.” The idea behind community supported agriculture is that the farm markets directly to a group of consumers, a relationship which is very different from what you would usually see in normal agricultural marketing.
Given that I am the farmer and you are the consumer, what you do at the beginning of the year is buy a share of my production. Once my produce comes on line, in June or July, or whenever, you are going to come to me, or I am going to deliver to you, a selection of my produce. I commit to you a share of the produce over the season; you commit to me by your purchase of that share. Your share might cost 200 $ which you pay up front. Most of the farmers who practice community-supported agriculture are organic farm producers. The network is the means of bringing the farmers and the consumers together in a more efficient way. Equiterre is trying to be the bridge between the producer and the consumer. The independent csa has a major problem to accomplish this.
There are now 60 Montreal area farms involved in Équiterre and 10 000 consumers on the other side. Now, Equiterre is trying to get these producers to cooperate to solve the quantity, variety, availability problems, to solve the turnover problem. Équiterre attempts to solve the marketing and distribution problems, to satisfy the consumer. Getting the producers to meet the needs of the consumers in the area will make the small-scale farm successful.
Q. What about farmers who have beef, the local slaughtering, the regulations … ?
A. Back to food safety. The government will not back off on meat processing regulations. Commercial agriculture drives regulation in this country.
Some local farmers will raise beef, meat, to order, and will have the meat prepared according to regulation for the consumer. Michael Rossi is a local csa producer for vegetables of superb variety, quality, and quantity.
Q. How did this meeting evolve?
What problem does Arundel have that we are addressing?
A. There is no specific problem. We had a sense that Dr. Hemming had expertise, academically, and as a member of a small, rural community, who could give us a sense of how the forces of change might be dealt with here so that we could improve our chances handling the challenges of change successfully. It is quite interesting to read the handout which Dr. Henning has brought. It is the type of approach which can be applied to problems entirely unrelated to agriculture. It is the type of process which a community on a larger scale can commit to, so that 20 or 30 years from now, there is that general sense that we handled those challenges of change rather well and that we still have a community that is a wonderful place to live in.
Q. Can I take a shot to raise something personal? Management of change would be, in my point of view, would be the prevention of change. I am a small landowner, a weekend house; I would be interested in preventing the Mont-Tremlantisation of this township. That’s my opinion. There must be others.
A. One of the reasons we are having this meeting is to prevent this change, to keep the area agricultural, unspoiled.
Q. Are the farm-size property owners under pressure? Do they feel that they are under pressure to change? Do they feel under pressure to alter their style of agriculture?
A. I don’t think we are being forced to change. The reason farms are getting bigger is that you cannot make a living on a small farm. You could still make a living with dairy production. But, the problem of going into dairy for a young person is the cost of 300 000 $ just for the milk quota; you could expect to pay 500 000 $ just to get set up with cows, and then, you have to buy a farm on top of that. No young fellow is going to invest 500 000 $ at the present time. … Outsiders … most of the people who own the farms here are outsiders … even if they have been here for 25 years, we still consider them to be outsiders … all the farms have been bought by outsiders, people from the city or elsewhere …
Dairy politics, Canada support which was there ten years ago is no longer there … there is a lot of concern to remove farm support tariffs … farm policies (politics) are being more and more driven by urban interests, not agricultural interests … 100 billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. It is. But, it’s only about 10 % of Canada’s economy … and relatively speaking it is getting smaller and smaller, and smaller at the farm level … and one of the realities is that money and politics go together … the voice of agriculture is becoming less and less influential as time goes on … the 500 000 $ investment in dairy production does not look wise …
Q.What about … a farmers’ market in Arundel?
A. if you are going to have a farmer’s market, you have to be connected. People have to be able to get here … the road? … That’s an issue … it has to be easy for people to get here … Vankleek Hill has a successful market; it is easy to get there … there are other things there …
Phil Arbor is willing to put the time in, put himself on the line, is creative; he is a keystone organiser … a big part of the reason that the farmers’ market and any of the changes are there in Vankleek Hill is Phil …
We have a large summer population and people at Mont -Tremblant have easy access to this area. I would say we have a few organic farmers, and others, so that a small farmers’ market might work.
Getting the farmers, producers, to cooperate, is something the community has to support … Most of the farmers like the idea but find it awfully difficult to find the time to get the market organised. At the community level you can start helping them, supporting them networking them … essentially, that’s what Equiterre is doing in the Montreal area.
Organic farming and the “price premium.”
Regular wheat might sell for 200 $ per ton; organic wheat sells for 500 $ per ton and looks attractive to many … a few years ago, there was a wheat substitute spelt and there was short crop and farmers were getting 1200 $ per ton, which was unbelievable, and this attracted a lot of interest and the year following a lot of people grew spelt and, as you would expect, the price went down. It wasn’t 1200 $ the next year. And, one of the things we are expecting to happen over time, as more and more people go organic, is that price premium is going to start disappearing.
So, often, when I talk to people who are thinking of going into organic, I tell them, “Don’t count on it. Work out your budget and finances, assuming that you are going to get a conventional price. And, if you can make it on a conventional price, go for it. But, if you have to have that premium, you are taking a very great risk. Over time that premium will disappear.”
Sometimes that premium is not there at all.
Bevin Boyd:
We had our farm focus group the other night. We 12 or so people there. A few were local farmers and few were “new” farmers, if you like. I don’t know that there was that much that much optimism in terms of making a living on the farm in this part of the country, but there certainly seemed to be an optimism among the farmers, the people there, to continue farming. I actually tried to close the meeting, to say, “Well, we’ll go home,” but … as it worked out, there are two more meetings planned of this group that didn’t want to go away. I find it interesting that as we talk about agriculture in this part of the country, you can count them on one hand, on part of one hand, of people actually making a living here. It seems strange because there are whole lot of people making a living here. One things seems interesting is that everybody wants to keep the country the same. They talked about, in the Tremblant paper, about Tremblant developing so much, about St-Faustin and La Conception. And then talked about Arundel saying, “There isn’t that much possibility for houses here because it is all farmland.” I think that is what people like here. So, if our municipal people help us out … We are not making any money on the farms … you don’t have to be a genius to figure that out; you just need a cigarette box and a pencil and you can figure out in about two minutes … but, it does make the country look beautiful when you drive through, so if we want a nice looking place for the tourists, we had better help out the farmers …. I don’t know about young people … As Norman said, “We haven’t had a farm bought by a farmer … in how long, Norman?”
“It must be 25 years.”
….
End of recording of the 17
October evening session.
References and Links for Dr. John
Henning
Dr. John Henning,
Agricultural Economist, Macdonald Campus, McGill University
and
http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/staff.htm
http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/staff/henning/
http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/AGRECON/staff/henning/jhcv.htm
http://www.mcgill.ca/macdonald/
http://upload.mcgill.ca/macdonald/FAESresearchexpertise.pdf
Department
of
Agricultural Economics, McGill University
John C. Henning, Department Chair, Associate Professor, and Director of
ACADEMIC ADVISOR: for Programs in Ecological Agriculture at McGill
Current Research
Economic aspects of ecological/organic farming and food systems, urban farming, organic standards, Grain marketing and trade, Fuel ethanol production and other industrial applications, Energy and carbon accounting.
CV- selected publications
Courses
AGEC-320
Economics of Agricultural Production
AGEC-425
Agricultural Econometrics
AGEC-440
Advanced
Agr. and Food Marketing
AGRI-250
Principles of Eco-Agriculture
AGEC-611
Price
Analysis
AGEC-660
Agricultural Commodity Trading
AGEC-690
Seminar
373-383
Land Use: Planning and Redesign
LINKS
Journal Links:
Agricultural Economics Bibliography:
Energy and
Agriculture
Bibliography: Economics of Organic Agriculture
Macdonald Campus Committee on the Environment
Lyon Organic Conference Information
Address
Department of Agricultural Economics,
Raymond Bldg.,
Macdonald Campus of McGill University
Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec,
H9X-3V9
VOX: (514) 398-7826 ( NB. NO Voice
Mail Available)
FAX: (514) 398-8130
NET: henning@macdonald.mcgill.ca
http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/pub/1999.htm
Henning, John
Baker, L.B.B., J.C. Henning, S. Jenni, E. Fava and K.A. Stewart. "An Economic and Energy Analysis of a Number of Pepper Production Systems Using a Range of Nitrogen Levels, Plastic Mulch and Irrigation". American Society of Plasticulture, 28th National Agricultural Plastics Congress, Tallahassee, Florida, May 19 - 22, (1999): 82-87.
http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/pub/2001.htm
Henn, Patrick and John Henning. The Contingent Valuation Method and the Value of Urban Agriculture: Empirical Evidence from Havana, Cuba. Urban Agriculture, No. 5, December 2001 (49-50).
* Messele, Teklay, Laurie Baker, Paul J. Thomassin, and John C. Henning. 2001. "Economic and Environmental Viability of Substituting Lupins for Soybeans: The Case of Dairy Farming in Southwest Quebec". Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, Vol. 18(1):23-53.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/links/start-392001/msg00257.html
John
C. Henning
(Agricultural Economics) (http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/
- To: <lflondon@worldnet.att.net>, <london@metalab.unc.edu>
- Subject: John C. Henning (Agricultural Economics) (http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/s
- From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon@worldnet.att.net>
- Date:
Fri, 3 Sep 1999 22:25:36 -0400
http://www.agrenv.mcgill.ca/agrecon/staff/henning/henning.htm
John C. Henning (Agricultural Economics).url
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Page
The organic
farming myth
- To: <sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu>
- Subject: The organic farming myth
- From: "John Henning, Eco-Echo, McGill U., Montreal, Ca" <INF3@musicb.mcgill.ca>
- Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 12:48:46 EDT
- Cc: Stuart Hill in Australia <s.hill@uws.edu.au>
- Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
A colleague was cleaning out some files and recently dropped an
old paper on my desk. For those with an interest in the history
of organic farming, I think you will enjoy having a look. It reads
like something that might have inspired a young Mr. Avery. The
original has been added to EAP's "propaganda" file.
We do not have a date for the paper, but think it may have been
written during the 1950's or early 1960's. Perhaps someone at
Kansas State might be able to help out.
The document can be found on the EAP Web Site at:
www.eap.mcgill.ca/indices/Organic_agriculture/OAM.htm.
I have included here the first two paragraphs from the paper. They
provide a fairly good indication of the author's point of view.
John Henning, Ecol. Agr. Projects
McGill University,
H9X 3V9
VOX: 514-398-7826/7820
FAX: 8130
NET: INF3@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA
WEB: WWW.EAP.MCGILL.CA
WWW.AGRENV.MCGILL.CA/AGRECON
===========================================
THE ORGANIC FARMING MYTH
by R.I.Throckmorton
Dean, Kansas State College
In recent years there has grown up in this country a cult of
misguided people who call themselves "organic farmers" and who
would - if they could - destroy the chemical fertilizer industry
on which so much of our agriculture depends.
These so-called organic farmers preach a strange, two-pronged
doctr1ne compounded mainly of pure superstition and myth, with
just enough half-truth, pseudo science and emotion thrown in to
make their statements sound plausible to the uninformed.
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/links/start-392001/msg00137.html
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Page
Canadian organic
standard
- To: <sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu>
- Subject: Canadian organic standard
- From: "John Henning, Eco-Echo, McGill U., Montreal, Ca" <INF3@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA>
- Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 10:09:44 EDT
- Cc: Hart Haidn <hart.haidn@home.com>
- Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
For those of you following the development of organic standards
in Canada, here is a recent press story on the official
announcement of the new National Standard.
The article was brought to my attention by Hart Haidn
(hart.haidn@home.com) in Saskatchewan. By the way, Hart is
organizing another organic conference to be held this fall
(November 14-16) in Saskatoon. You can find more information on
the conference, at http://agricola.homepage.com/
I would be remiss if I did not add the interpretive note that
despite the impression presented in the article, there is
still a ways to go before the standard will be effective.
------------------------------------------
Canada Introduces National Standard for Organic Agriculture}
OTTAWA, June 29 //CNW//
The Government of Canada unveiled a new National Standard of
Canada for Organic Agriculture - a step that will clarify just
what the organic in organic agriculture means. The Government
of Canada made the announcement through the Canadian General
Standards Board (CGSB) of Public Works and Government Services
Canada, and the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), a federal
Crown Corporation.
The standard outlines principles for organic agriculture that
endorse production and management practices that contribute to
the quality and sustainability of the environment and ensure the
ethical treatment of livestock. The joint announcement was made
today by the Honourable John Manley, Minister of Industry and
Minister responsible for the Standards Council of Canada, the
Honourable Alfonso Gagliano, Minister of Public Works and
Government Services, and the Honourable Lyle Vanclief, Minister
of Agriculture and Agri-Food. We now have a national standard
that can be recognized and applied in markets around the globe,
said Minister Manley.
For Canadian producers of organic agri-foods produce this will
translate to greater and easier access to international markets
that demand these kinds of standards. Mr. Manley added that he
was pleased to see the SCC actively promoting efficient and
effective standardization in accordance with its mandate. I am
very proud of the consensus-building work done by the Canadian
General Standards Board in managing the development of this
important new standard, said Minister Gagliano. It was
developed through the CGSB Standards Committee on Organic
Agriculture, which comprises various technical experts who
provided broad-based input. Once again, the CGSB has demonstrated
its unique expertise and valuable leadership as the Government of
Canada s leading standardization organization. The Canadian Food
Inspection Agency, which delivers all federally mandated food
inspection activities, supported the Canadian organic industry in
its efforts to establish the national standard.
This new National Standard of Canada will provide consumers with
a consistent meaning for organic , helping them to make more
informed choices, said Minister Vanclief. All food produced in
Canada, whether organic or not, must meet the same stringent
requirements for safety and quality.
Among its provisions, the standard:
- prohibits use of ionizing radiation in the preservation of food
- prohibits use of genetically engineered or modified organisms
- encourages maximum use of recycling
- encourages maximum rotation of crops and promotion of biodiversity.
The document is available for purchase by the general public, and
an abstract of the Standard will be available on the Web site of
the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB):
http:////www.pwgsc.gc.ca//cgsb
To order copies of the National Standard of Canada for Organic
Agriculture, which will be listed as CAN//CGSB-32.310, contact:
CGSB Sales Centre
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 1G6
Phone: (819) 956-0425
or 1-800-665-2472 (Canada only)
Fax: (819) 956-5644
Email address:
For English materials: ncr.cgsb-ongc@pwgsc.gc.ca
Saturday, October 18, 2003, A.M.
Phil Arbour, introduced by Johanna Earle. Mr. Arbour is an organic farmer, engineer, business person, and community activist who will speak to the development at Vankleek Hill, Ontario.
Speech by Mr. Phil
Arbor of Vankleek Hill
I apologise for being late. I spent a lot of time looking at the scenery.
My name is Phil Arbor, originally from Western Canada, I moved to Vankleek Hill from Montreal. I operate a 200 acre organic farm on very marginal land, I also own an art gallery, I am an antique dealer, I am a civil engineer by trade, which is both good and bad in terms of getting along with people. I have a small engineering firm in the area. I also do community service work and I stick my nose into a lot of places where I shouldn’t.
Community activist, that’s a strange word. I have never been called a community activist; I do not consider myself a community activist. A community activist, I think, has a few better qualifications than I have, and a community activist, I would think, tends to draw on people’s talents and pull people together towards a common cause, and, as you will find our from what I have to say, that has not necessarily been my method. Again, that has good aspects to it and bad aspects to it. Shit disturber more describes a lot of what I have been and a lot of what I have done and what I have been called, although I have been called worse.
I have to tell you from the beginning, I don’t want you to get the impression that I am negative about what I have done, about what I do, because I am not (negative) but there are some down sides to what I have done and the way I have done it. There are two major downsides: first of all, you get an awful lot of abuse from people who feel that you do not have the right to do it and also from people who object to changes in the status quo. And the other thing is that you get is, that I have gotten, I have been referred to as the richest man in the county The reason is, people think one of two things. Either I am making a lot of money at what I am doing, i.e. the community or I must have an awful lot of money in order to devote the time and money to do what I do. Neither of which is true.
I have six different businesses because I need six different businesses to eke out the living, and I shouldn’t say “eke out,” to make the living I make. And, eh … So, that’s a big negative … in the last couple of years, that attitude that people have about me has changes some of the things that I do.
Let’s start with a couple of definitions. First of all, in Vankleek Hill the definition of a native is “not one but two sets of grand parents buried in the local cemetery.” That’s the definition of a native. The other definition of a native is either the Queen’s land grant in the 1600 or 1700’s was in your name or the two sets of grand parents in the local cemetery allowed the land that you presently work to be referred to as yours. Otherwise, you are on Bill Brown’s farm. Bill Brown died in 1816 but it is still “Bill Brown’s farm” for the reasons that I have already outlined.
Where are we. We are in eastern Ontario, hard by the Quebec border. We have 34 % higher incidences of heart disease than the provincial average. We 32 % higher incidence of cancer than the provincial average. We have an unemployment rate that, officially, is 12 % but, unofficially, it’s 24 %. We have one of the highest demands for food bank use of anywhere in Ontario. The local OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) writes more incident, official reports, reports per 1000 population than any other OPP detachment in the province, cities with their own police force excluded. That has a big influence on what goes on in our community. Politically, we vote for the Liberal party federally, and generally, the opposite provincially. Although, this year, we got it right and we have voted Liberal provincially, when the Liberals are forming the government. Municipally, we are apathetic. That’s our political base- we are apathetic. We really don’t care and unless you have a personal issue about the fact that your mail box has been torn down or unless you want a land severance, nobody comes to municipal council meetings. Nobody.
And when they do come and when their issue is dealt with, they leave.
I do not know whether that is traditional within all communities, but that is the way it works in our community.
Ethnically, we are neither French nor English, nor Scottish nor Irish, we are a conglomeration of all of those things. Predominantly, we are 65 % French and the rest is everybody else. And the reason I mention this, is because our adjacent county, which is Glengarry, is predominantly Scottish and the Scottish factor has a big influence on being able to draw people together, it’s a common cause, it’s a magnet around which a lot of things can be accomplished. We do not have that.
We do not have a river; we do not have a canal; we do not have a major highway; we have a hill. That’s what Vankleek Hill is and that’s all it is. It has a history, a very strong history. It had two railroad stations, neither one of which, because of the hill, are in the town, and that also has had an influence upon development in the town. Both those train stations are now demolished and our local municipal council and the council which had jurisdiction in that area did nothing to stop that. But, the fact that we are on a hill has an influence.
In normal small towns the train station would be in the town and it becomes the centre of, was the centre of community activity and could be used as a rallying point for a continuing centre of community activity, but not at Vankleek Hill.
Most of Vankleek Hill is made out of soft red brick,( most of the residences) and that was because there were brick factories in Vankleek Hill and there was a fire brick factory somewhere along the highway 34, generally towards the Laroque sawmills (you know where that is?) and that had a big influence the materials that we used in the construction of houses. We also had a pond in the middle of Vankleek Hill and there was a mill that made gingerbread and so most of the gingerbread you see in Van Kleek Hill is mostly made locally and those factors have influenced an attempt to preserve what is going on.
Ecologically, our biggest problem is pollution from existing industries and there are 15 pending mega-pork applications in the area of Prescott County, most due to the fact that Quebec has tightened their environmental laws and we have not, although the province has issued something called Bill 81 which is a food chain management programme law which is just coming into effect and it has some serious flaws in it, in the eyes of many, many people.
Economically, we are driven by Vaco Steel mill which is heavy industry and which is presently in receivership; medium sized industry like PBG which is in the manufacture of automobile windows which has laid off a third of its (labour) force and the agricultural industry in all its forms both dairy, beef and pork and cash cropping which is losing 10 % of its people per year.
Our biggest social issue, aside from health, is probably why you are here and why I am here- it’s what is in scarce supply in any community, is leadership which probably comes in a great number of forms.
One suggestion which I will give now: if there is anything that you can do to make your community better, that is teach leadership skills to your kids. Cream rises to the top and if you have had anything to do with cows, you know that it takes a while for the cream to get there. There is very little cream for the amount of milk. Leadership skills are needed; leaders are what is needed. In the world there are two kinds of people, leaders and followers. The number of leaders relative to followers is very, very small. … There are many reasons why people do not want to be leaders. If it is taught right from the beginning and if the system sets it up so that leadership is respected ( and leaders can create respect for leadership) then there is great value in leadership.
In 1996, we decided, it was decided, to celebrate Vankleek Hill’s 100 Anniversary of incorporation and its 200 Anniversary of founding (we could not get a hard date on the founding) because Mr. Vankleek was a horse thief who, as British empire Loyalist, got run out of the United States, when the Americans found out that he was stealing horses and selling them to the British … nobody could find out whether he came in 1793 or 1796. It was decided that 1997 would be our centennial and bicentennial year.
A group of people got together to coordinate the centennial/bicentennial celebrations. And, why did they get together? It was because there was an artist in Vankleek Hill, a gentleman who was not considered very highly amongst the local population of Vankleek Hill. He was a local guy who had lost a lot of brain cells due to illegal drugs. He was a sculptor and he wanted to do a sculpture of Simeon Vankleek, the founder, in spite of the fact that there was no photograph of Simeon Vankleek. And so, to make sure that this did not happen, because statues of people do not do much for the community, that was their opinion, they got together to cut him off at the pass and decide that something else ought to be done to celebrate the bicentennial. They invited me to participate and I said, “I think a statue is great but it ought to be a statue of someone who has done something for Vankleek Hill other that Mr. Simeon Vankleek” and I suggested that we do a statue of René Levesque.
And, I was serious, and I still am serious. René Levesque and the PQ government did more for eastern Ontario than any premier, than any MP, any MPP, any local politician ever did. Not only the first time he was elected but the second time he was elected.
When I moved to Vankleek Hill in 1973, I bought 210 acres for 12 000 dollars. When the PQ got elected the first time, land values went from 20 $ an acre to 200 $ an acre. When they got elected the second time land values went from 200 $ an acre to 400 $ an acre. Rene Levesque did more for eastern Ontario, not just Vankleek Hill, than anyone has ever done for eastern Ontario.
In addition to which, I thought, a statue of René Levesque would really, really, really get national attention. Here is this Ontario town doing a statue to a Quebec premier, not exactly a well-loved person by the other Ontarians, people in Ontario, nor people in Canada for that matter, but a damned good politician. On the other hand, I must admit, I admired the man. I did not agree with his policies; I admired him. He had principles which he stuck by. Anyway, this not get very far among the conservative people of Vankleek Hill.
They got together and they decided they were going to do tree planting, a museum, and they were going to do a reunion and they were going to have a parade and they put me in charge of the parade. This was great. I have been running parades for a long time and I still do. Main street is actually a part of a county road, operated by the County of Prescott and Russell and in order to close the road for the parade, we had to get a permit from the county. The reeve of the town (at that time Vankleek Hill was a single political entity) sat on the county council and so he took the request to the county council and said, “We can’t be closing the street for these people. If we do this for these people, we have to do this for everybody. We can’t close the street willy-nilly like this. No.” So council voted not to allow us to close the street for the parade.
We informed county council that we were closing the street, that we were having the parade, and that I would be located at a particular street corner at a particular day. If they wanted to have me arrested they could do so. Because we felt that if you can’t lead and you won’t follow, will you please get out of the way? And it has been about that process that has driven most of what has been accomplished in Vankleek Hill, by that stuff that I have been involved in. And, that is not necessarily good.
The system can best be described as benevolent dictatorship. And whereas, I believe, it has been benevolent, it is a dictatorship. And, most people don’t, most people will go along with it because they can see that you are going from point A to point B, and you know where point B is, and they want to get on the band wagon, because they want to get there, for whatever reason, not necessarily for the reasons that you have, their own reasons, but the want to get there. And, they see that you are going to get there, so they tag along. But, over the long haul, benevolent dictatorships don’t work. And, I strongly suggest that the system that you are a part of has a far, far greater chance of success than the system that I have employed.
In 1981 there was an art show in Vankleek Hill put on by several of the local artists and it appeared to some people who would have like to have joined that it was very much a closed shop. It had limited space, as most houses have; it was held in two private homes and it appeared to be the friend of the friend of the friend. So, I took it upon myself to establish another art show in another locale at the same time in the town and that led the beginnings of to what became known as the May Show Festival in Vankleek Hill which became bigger year by year and added outdoor, street craft people, and added a visual art show. It added performing arts. We brought in performers from different ethnic groups in Montreal to try to expose Vankleek Hill to them and Vankleek Hill to different culture. We brought 130 native Canadian Indians from the Cornwall reserve into town who performed both singing and dancing on a stage we had set up in town one year at the May Show. May Show started out as a one day event, ended up as a four day event. It was amazing to see the reaction of the people who lived in the town who had never been close to a native Canadian. We brought a group of Chinese dancers from a cultural centre in Montreal. We had Indian, as in southeast Indian, dancers; a Ukrainian dance group, various different groups in various different years. We brought in Lee as a jazz performer one year.
And, a meeting with the fire chief one day, in his place of work and one of the secretaries said to me, “What do you do with all the money that you make at the May Show Festival?” “well,” I said, “ It goes to cover the costs.” And they said, “You take a town street, you divide it up into spaces, you rent those spaces. Our town, our tax money. You put that money in your pocket?”
I said, “Yeah, when you put it that way, yes, that’s exactly what I do.” Anyway, she called me a thief. Which is fine. It’s her prerogative. It’s her point of view. Anyway, I no longer do the May Show Festival as a result of that conversation. It died for a couple of years and the people realised that it was an important aspect of the community and some people have put together some effort to bring back the festival and it is coming back.
The interesting part of what has been done, is the fact that there was little or no involvement of any level of government. Now, I have always had a healthy disrespect for government, for politics, and for politicians. One of the reason that none of the things I have done has been incorporated is because incorporation allows you to apply for different grants and I never felt that is the way it should be. I felt that the government, especially municipal government, should offer assistance because they should understand that what is being done is important to the community and important to them. Municipal governments, governments we have had have not seen it from that point-of-view. And, if you are governed here by a group of people who are leading, or at least part of the throng that is trying to get from point A to point B, consider yourselves unbelievably lucky. That isn’t generally the way it goes.
Vankleek Hill have good reasons for being the way they are, one of which is setting precedents, another one is liability problems, another one is their limited resources, another one is the fact that they really do not want to lead in a manner which communities need leadership from their government. We amalgamated in 1988 and the day of amalgamation, four townships into one, the day the ice storm struck and that ice storm was the single, most unifying thing that has happened in eastern Ontario in a long time, certainly in the Vankleek Hill area. It brought us together as a community and people shared, and people helped, and people did a lot of things together and looked out for each other. But, it didn’t last. And, because it was a very traumatic incident, you could not expect to maintain the momentum it needed to pull the community together. Anybody has his own needs and everybody has his own ideas of what they need and want in the community but togetherness is probably a sense of community, a sense of togetherness, a sense of being of a like-mind, a like-location, as in your case, a like-location, where you are surrounded by limits of geography, is probably more important than almost almost anything. We don’t have that.
We went to the township council and said, and wanted, a group went and applied to have council limit smoking in public places and the counsellors were adamant that it was not their responsibility- “We’re not here to tell you how to live.” We pointed out to them that they have by-laws where we can put our snow, what size fence you have to have around your swimming pool, what days you put out your garbage, how many dogs and cats you can have in your house, what you can or cannot put on the telephone poles. None of these regulations the public asked for. But you imposed them anyway. But, here is the public asking you to impose regulations for their benefit and yours, I might add and they did not see this as being their responsibility.
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I decided that the town looked ugly, and it does because we have a very wide main street with … on both sides and very narrow sidewalks and houses right beside the sidewalks and so in the interest of beautification, we wanted to put flower baskets on the poles. To make a long story short, the town wouldn’t hear of it so I went to a friend of mine who ran the metal working shop at the local high school and had the brackets made and applied to Hydro and Bell Telephone for permission to put them up, bought the flower baskets and had them installed and went to the town and said, “Now, here it is. Will you maintain it?” They said, “No.” As a result of a process of wearing them down, they now have a contractor who maintains them and they are getting nicer. It’s looking a lot better.
In 1983, I was driving down Vankleek Hill one day, I was looking at this big, huge, ugly wall which was covered at the time with tin. It was 160 feet long and 22 feet high and I thought, “ That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.” It covered a wood structure which was one of Vankleek Hill’s oldest buildings. And I went to visit a couple of artist friends and I said, “How would you like to do a mural?” A short while later they agreed and that was the beginning of the mural project in Vankleek Hill by the three of us. I did the leg work and they did the art work. These ladies had never worked a scaffold. There are now four murals in Vankleek Hill and they have had a serious effect upon Vankleek Hill, the public’s perception of itself, their perception of their town, and has had a serious effect on the number of tourists that come into town. It’s done all that they can do. They are deteriorating now. The group has been disbanded. Now, the town needs something else. It had an opportunity to get something else when a movie company came to town- cobblestones for the main street, burial of the Hydro lines … Mr. Hoffman, the star of the show, refused the script and Vankleek Hill no longer suited because winter was coming.
There is always expense. For the murals project we sold prints. We are still paying off some of those debts.
If this is sounding negative, it is not. There are still things going on, things are still happening. Attitudes are changing. But, there is still a lot of crap.
We have no building standards by-law. No protection for heritage houses and buildings. If you have no respect for your heritage, you have no respect for the people who live in that community. They are intimately tied. If you do not remember who you were, then you don’t know who you are then you have even less chance of knowing where you are going.
If you find that those are strong words, if you think I am preaching to you, I would like someone to say so. I think the past is the past is not only the key to the present, the past is also the key to the future. Why do you think we spend money maintaining cemeteries? We spend good money maintaining cemeteries because that is where your heritage is.
Once you have established roots here, this is your heritage.
One of the things we also do not have in Vankleek Hill- you have a certain geography that we do not and I mean that in this location you have valleys, hills, and water and these have to have a positive effect on your head space. It has to have an effect of giving to a sense of peace and tranquility. It is something you should preserve. Part of what came out of the bicentennial committee action was a desire to restore an historical tower which rests on the back of a property which I own, called Arbor Gallery, in Vankleek Hill. It is the largest single residence in Vankleek Hill, the largest single lot size, the former Higginson home and it has on it a tower which started out as a grist mill because the tower was on top of a hill and the wind did not hit the vanes at the appropriate angle. As a grist mill it failed. So, Mr. Higginson, who had a strong interest in astronomy, took down the section of the mill and created a platform, a set of stairs on the inside, and put up a big telescope and used it to study the stars. It was used by local students for the study of the stars and it is reputed to have been used as an observation tower during the Fenian Raids of 1867. The tower is 90 % ruins and was going to create a museum. That was in 1997, now 2003, almost 2004. Nothing has happened to the tower in the past 6 years.
Out of the blue, I was invited to a meeting and Mr. Martel and Mr. Berthiaume and a editor of the local newspaper have this idea: we are going to create a time capsule to have people put things into the time capsule, for a fee, and the time capsule is going to be buried for 25 years and the money that we raise is going to go to restore the tower. I thought … a great idea. We went to the county council to tell them what we were doing and to tell them that once we got this tower going, the council was going to run it. We are going to hand you a turn-key operation. The town is going to become a tourist operator, now going to own a tourist attraction and run it for the community. The Higginson family had donated an 8-foot telescope. The necessary arrangements were made.
We got involved in starting a farmer’s market and it is about to expand to block all of main street on Saturday morning.
We are in danger of dying and we live with that fear on a daily basis. Much has been destroyed, much has gone out of business. We are trying to hang on to what we have, to recapture our past glory. We have declared ourselves the gingerbread capital of Ontario. Signs will announce that. The Christmas parade will feature gingerbread. We have six churches, four restaurants, a coffee shop and a pastry shop. The four restaurants feature hamburger steak. Having quality restaurants, expensive, is a key to any community. It is imperative when you want to attract people into town, a restaurant is an excellent start. The council will not finance a restaurant but the public can by supporting it.
Everything that we do, we do in the intent of trying to bring outside people to our community and to the extent that Vankleek Hill is developing a community reputation, a reputation of a community of interest, we aim to bring other people to town to try to invigorate the town economically and to try to expose more and more people to who we are and what we are.
When I got this in the fax machine, after speaking to Mr. Cooke, I couldn’t believe it. For you people to have made an inventory of what it is that you have, what you don’t have, what it is that you think you need, for you to ask yourselves these kinds of questions and, I assume, got responses for them. For you to have established workshops and focus groups to discuss individual areas of interest and to prioritise them and to come here today to try to try to put this strategic plan together, absolutely blows me away. This doesn’t happen under normal circumstances and what really, really, really surprises me, is that, if I am not mistaken, this is being driven by your local community government. Wow! Quebec sait faire. It is absolutely and positively the right way to go.
The broader the base the bigger the pyramid you can build. The more people you can get involved, the more consensus you are going to have, the more you can accomplish. The benevolent dictatorship system, which does get you from point A to point B, it gets you there, perhaps, a lot quicker than this is going to get you, it leaves you with what you with what you have accomplished at point B, but it doesn’t leave you a structure. It doesn’t leave you an organisation and it doesn’t leave you with a sense of community that carries forward to the next project. This will. This guarantees, if you have enough patience, this is guaranteed to work. It is, perhaps, the only system that not only works but leaves you with something to go on with.
Yeah. There are a lot of people with a lot of strange ideas, all of whom have a right to be heard and all of whom deserve their time at the mike. If you can deal with that and if you can deal with weeding through all the ideas and establishing priorities, and bringing those priorities together, coming up with a plan and if you can not piss off too many people in the process because of some idea you can’t have it all, somebody’s ideas have to be rejected. If you can do that, then I can guarantee you that whatever it is that you decide to do, you will be successful at. If there is one thing that engineering teaches you, it is that if you take a problem, you break it down into its smallest components. You find a solution for each component and then you start putting it back together. Every kid and every adult, too, probably, should have a set of Lego because that is how problems are solved. Those big puzzles will do the same thing. But that is how problems are solved: break it down, divide it into its smallest components, design solutions for each component and then start putting it back together. Sometimes you have to go back to square one because this solution won’t fit with that solution; your idea won’t fit with his idea because you don’t live on the same street. That is the way to solve problems. That’s the way to build community and that’s the way to get things done.
No, it’s not going to be done tomorrow. Part of the problem with engineering background and an engineering way of thinking is that you want to get things done now because you have other things that must be done. So, a pushed, a rushed timetable often results in not being able to and not being prepared to listen to everybody’s ideas. And, that is not a good idea.
This is. It is not only a good idea, it’s a great idea. If you stick with this idea, you are going to end up with a community like the community that Garrison Keiler talks about in a A Prairie Home Companion, Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are pretty, all the men are handsome, and all the children are above average.
Thank you for listening.
Question: how to react to the development at Tremblant?
A. You can insulate your community from the Tremblant development and stay how you are, keep what you have or you can selectively choose the advantages that that development down the road offer, so you might want to offer housing which might attract the staff. What you don’t want is to be a suburb whereby you get all the bad part, they get all the cream. Are you trying to preserve? Do you feel threatened? Do you want to get in on some of this action? It depends on where you want to go?
You want to be sure that what they are prepared to give you, you want and are prepared to handle. You offer them what you want to offer- no condos but … Being proactive is always a better way.
A couple of suggestions:
Get rid of the school bus. School busses cause mothers more anxiety than they are prepared to admit. School busses cost money. Walk your kids to school. Walk your kids to school or drive your kids to school. In the primary years, walk your kids to school. The bonding time is worth every cent that it costs. The exercise that you get, the exercise that the kid gets, the idea that there is effort that ifs put in to going to school makes it worth it. Get rid of the school bus. There’s a radical idea.
Close the town. Every once in a while, shut it down. Shut it down to traffic. Put the people in the street. Bring people out to some community event. Eliminate the car. Give the streets back to the people. Don’t be afraid of being different, of being unique.
Saturday, October 18, P.M.
Welcome to the afternoon session. We have a very special guest, Dr. Jonathan Morgan, he has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Macdonald College, a degree in veterinary medicine and a master’s degree in reproductive physiology from the University of Guelph. He is now the associate director of the Kemptville Agricultural College.
Dr. Morgan.
I particularly enjoyed driving through Vankleek Hill on my way to Arundel and looking at the murals. Vankleek Hill is a nice spot. And then I was going to tell him about Scotch Road. If you take Scotch Road and do it properly, you can get from Hawkesbury to Arundel in an hour without speeding. …
Mr. Arbor spoke. They talk about having an idea what the community should look like. We are not able to tell people how they should keep their houses … One piece of history strikes me as being important here is after the Olympics, when we didn’t have a post office, they brought us that Metro car and they put it there and it was going to be our post office and it was an eyesore, I thought, at the bottom of the property which Cyril Flanagan donated to Arundel for the Centennial … and nobody really complained when the windows got smashed and they had to take it away. In that case we were able to tell the government what we thought about their trying to change our environment and I think that the way everybody got it organised and put that old train station in and made it the post office, very pleasant to look at and it is far more, in my mind, what the community wanted to have.
I am supposed to talk about the biological threat. We will get there I promise.
I do have strong roots in Arundel. My plan is to come back to Arundel and because the plan that we are supposed to be doing is looking into the future, one of the things that I did was to contact a bunch of people with a position similar to mine. I talked to them about what they see for Arundel. I am very pleased when I listen to your summary of things that seem to be important. A lot of the things that are important to the people already living here are the same as those for the people who are planning to come back.
Even when we are planning to come back and our children are grown, we still think it is very important that there be things for young people to do … that we be looking for employment for young people in Arundel, that the things that are the best about Arundel are some of the physical characteristics of the land. And, last weekend the colour of the trees and everything, the scenery was so nice. It has never been better. You could come up and just look at that. The physical part of what we have in Arundel is so important and the other part that we enjoy when we come back every weekend, is that sense of real community.
One of the things we have that Vankleek Hill doesn’t have; they have their Scottish roots and we have whatever roots we have, … most people who come to Arundel like what it is. They like the community, they like the scenery. I don’t feel that we are threatened by, internally, people who want to change everything that we’ve got and make it more Tremblantish or whatever. People come here for what we do have.
One other thing which my friend, Gordon, brought up: the future looks different from where you are at the present. So, for people who are retired and here in Arundel, the future looks like … and the future for somebody like Gordon spreads out quite a bit longer and may have different directions or needs. But still, they can fall within the philosophy that we all can agree on.
I want to thank all those who organised this conference. If it shows that we have a commonality, that is good; and if we have differences then we can deal with those.
When the process started, one of the things that was big in the news was SARS. All of a sudden there was this crisis around it and because they were thinking about a strategic plan for Arundel, I think that it became a part of it and so they asked a group of us to look into the contagious disease problem, SARS, rabies, all kinds of things … So, they casually asked us … Our realisation was: on those big, global type of problems like SARS, tuberculosis, or other foreign disease problems and usual significant things, as a municipality, a town, we do not have a lot of influence or control or whatever. We have impact. We could have had SARS in Arundel. Somebody could have gotten off a plane, could have come to Arundel. We could have had an outbreak of SARS here and we would all have been quarantined. It is possible that that could happen. But there isn’t really much that we can do planning wise. Energy into that area is probably quite wasted.
One of the things that our little group did recognise: is that it is very important for us to be tied into the information centres, the public health centres and that kind of area …
Medical service in the area are pretty much limited to Dr. Rondeau who may not be around forever and the CLSC in St-Jovite. One issue: how do we provide day-to-day medical services in the community? Train people. A clinic … a nurse practitioner … somebody to … somewhere … someone with medical competence so that we have in house to look after the day-to-day needs of our people … Our emergency response, the firemen get a reasonable amount of training to deal with disasters … One thing that can happen. In one town when SARS happened they went totally berserk, respirators … We have to be careful not to get so paranoid, as well.
The only real threat that we could see is water pollution problems. It is pretty interesting that having thought about that before and we come to the tree farm and we are not allowed to drink the water. We are drinking bottled water because we are not sure of the safety of the water. The community can look at getting safe water for all of us. Groundwater contamination may not be treatable. The municipality could look at controls for water quality testing. With growth the risk of contamination increases. The filter does not solve the water quality problem.
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Q. Organic farming is growing in the valley and most of us have heard bits and pieces with growing concern about genetically modified crops … and where gmc’s have been planted there have been able to spread to a neighbouring farm, so that what might have been a pure type of organic farm is suddenly deprived of it purity … Do you envisage that a valley like Arundel with 30 % of its acreage operated as certified organic operations could be threatened by the arrival in somebody’s garden or somebody’s field what turns out to be a genetically modified seed?
A. I like genetically modified. The seed that are licensed, I have total confidence in. That’s a different issue. With gmc there is no problem with the food. The problem you are talking about is: if I am growing a genetically modified tomato and you are growing them as well and they cross-pollinate, the tomato isn’t genetically modified itself. The seed, if it is compatible and actually fertile, might be. So, unless I am actually growing a crop where I am keeping the seed and doing the propagation myself, then it is not an issue. So, if whatever the farm is buying in the seed stuff, we don’t have a problem.
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- On some organic farms, they are growing what they call heritage crops and because there are not … (seed) available on the open market, they are turning over their seed …
- Then, you have the problem, if the cross-pollination is fertile, and if it is fertile, then you have the potential that the new seed is genetically modified. But, a lot of the genetically modified plants aren’t fertile. We produce the seed every time and if that does happen, then they do, they run the risk.
- To me, that’s the only issue with genetically modified seed or food that if we end up allowing it to spread everywhere, and it may not because it is not fertile, but at the point where we move over to the to a different type, then we have a true problem.
- But the nice thing about genetic modification is we can take the gene we are looking for out of this and in a genetically modified plant those other genes are still there. It’s a technology problem. You can have organically grown or genetically modified tomatoes. And I think we may well see that. It’s in the future. And, especially because if we have corn that is resistant to diseases that you don’t need to use pesticides for, that seems, to my mind, so much better and so much closer to organic … A lot of organic farmers use things that are organic, sulphur and other kinds of things, to spray their apple trees with, their plants with. Some of these things are indiscriminately toxic substances. They kill so much more than if you are just putting on an herbicide that just kills the fungus that you are actually looking at. They are telling us it is better because what they are using is natural and everything, but the actual production practice may not be. It is such a personal thing.
- Not one that everybody will agree with.
- … The quality of the land is not that great to expect high yields, so … so, they would not buy those seeds … those seeds are more expensive than the non modified … so, I don’t think we will see modified seed around here because they are …
- But, if you are going to grow corn, you might as well grow genetically modified corn because it’s going to be better. We hardly grow any of the crops that are modified. The Canadian government, the CFIA testing is involved with approving a product for sale on to the market. It involves a huge environmental impact. If is something that would spread easily to other farms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they are not being licensed. So one of the things about licensing programme is that they have already done … you either have confidence or you don’t have confidence. I have a lot of confidence in the millions of dollars they make the companies … that in order to be able to use this, it is safe for people and it is just not going to have a big environmental impact.
- It is not, as I was saying at the other meeting, it is not used here because of the economics and people don’t use pesticides, they don’t use herbicides, they don’t use chemical fertilisers because the size of the farm here does not allow them to pay for that. So, the whole valley is organic.
- But, they are not certified. … But, I think you might be demonstrating leadership if you decided that we were going to make the Arundel valley organic and not allow the use of certain things. In the City of Ottawa, when they took over the countryside, we just increased the size of the city by ten times, the population grew by a couple hundred thousand. They started imposing city rules on farms. That is pretty significant when you take away the right of a person to use a federally approved product for growth that will have a negative impact if they don’t use it on their ability to sustain themselves as farmers. So that somebody else has made a choice to grow a certain crop or whatever … is pure. You can do that.
- There is an economic factor though. The gentleman who spoke last night (Dr. Henning), his particular bailiwick is organic farming and he has been involved nationally, and to a certain extent internationally, establishing recognised standards to allow a organic, or so-called organic, operation to put up a licence that says, “We have been certified. We have passed the rigid test.” These people who are going organic are tapping into a particular market which is ready to buy and pay a premium, even though they may not fully understand the biology and the genetics of what they are buying, they believe that it’s valuable and they are prepared to spend twice as much money in order to get it. But, if an operation which has worked hard over many years to get that certification, finds itself suddenly failing an inspection test because it has been demonstrated that two or three of their fields have been infected by cross-contamination or cross-fertilisation, their products are no longer certifiable. They are out of business. It’ a huge impact on them. And my question that I ask is, “Should local authorities think ahead to a place where we might actually try to protect these operations so that they are less venerable to being destroyed economically by the sudden arrival of a genetically modified cross-pollination.
- In any given crop, the way that cross-pollination does happen is fairly well known. It is not too difficult, there are people who do it, they can do risk assessment on whether this field, here, has an … of being influence by this field whether it is organic or not organic. There you get to … either you have got to stop this person here from spraying chemical fertiliser because it abuts this guy here who wants to be organic and therefore some of it might blow over in the wind and we get to a lot of … But, that one about cross-pollination, that is a risk. That is a manageable risk To somebody who is way off in a valley and there is no other potential, their farm, for people to be growing that crop anywhere near them where there is so many acres of bush between them, they are not really at risk
- But, if you are in Hemingford and you are trying to grow organic apples in the middle of Hemingford … I don’t know if you possibly could grow organic apples in Hemingford because everybody for miles around you is spraying, But, if you’ve got ten apple trees up here, I don’t see a lot of people spraying. I don’t see ten apple trees in a group other than in a couple of places.
- In other words we are less at risk.
- I think you are much less at risk.
- And it is possibly manageable. And that is something that hopefully between neighbours, I hope the conflict management person has not left, with the conflict resolution person that you could manage those things between neighbours. Because that where it happens. It happens when they are very close in abutment. It’s got to be the same crop. If I am growing genetically modified soybean and you are growing watermelon, there is no risk at all. It is only when you are growing both the same crop and one of them is not.
- I would like to correct something this young lady said about our soil. In Arundel we have all kinds of soil. We have sand, sandy-loam, loam, clay-loam, and clay, and black muck. We got some of that soil … The only reason you could say that that soil is not good enough, is because somebody mined it too long instead of farming it. We know a farm here that used to grow hay five feet high. I was afraid to walk into that hay field in case I couldn’t get out. Now I bail hay on that farm and the hay is only that high ( 30 inches.) The soil didn’t change, the farmer did. We could easily grow anything and the smaller, you say the farms are too small, fertilise; the smaller the farm the more fertiliser you have to use, the more you have to grow per acre. If you have a 1000 acres then you can grow as you wish; if you have only a 100 acres, then you had better make it grow. And, that is what I find, in my case, I have to make my farm grow because we have only a 100 acres. And, it is not because of soil, it is because of the farmer.
- I know, on Cyril’s farm, in my lifetime, they never plowed the field. They put manure on, they did free ... put down more grass seed, when you watch them farming more intensively and actually doing the ploughing and that kind of stuff and you know that has an impact on the organic matter. It just does.
- It depends on the age of the soil. You not grow much on five feet of …
- So, you think … it could possible be that the farms you know have poor soil.
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They don’t have …
- In corn, the heat units makes it so that you have to grow such a low heat unit corn which is a low yielding corn that in a lot of cases that is not really feasible …
- I am sure that there are places where there were fields around here and there are no more fields and … the top soil has been eroded …
- I am not a total expert on genetically stuff although I have looked into it quite a bit and again I would say that the risk here is reasonably low, just like the risk of SARS is reasonably low. But, any individual could have a problem and you should deal with that.
- My concern is about West Nile Virus. I know that around here there are few municipalities that are using a biological control spray. I also know that this summer that few birds, not here in Arundel, but close that have been … contamination. Should we look at that as a community?
- Again, in West Nile Virus we have vaccines for livestock and there will be vaccines for people. The provincial government monitors the disease and whenever the risk is above minimal they inform the municipality. …
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- Q. Tremblant sprays for mosquitoes and black flies in their areas so that the tourists will not be bothered. A company offered us the possibility, economically very expensive, ecologically we did not think it was a good idea to do that because once you have killed all the insects and the birds have nothing to eat then you don’t have the solution to be able to control it later on … how do you feel about …
- A. Integrated pest management is a very good concept, using a biological product to control insects, but … in Tremblant their client is the tourists, so it really matters whether they are killing flies, mosquitoes and black flies or not; whereas here, we are the client and what we really like is sitting on Beaven Lake listening to the birds flying and we don’t mind the mosquitoes and there is not a health risk to us. Then, I would not support that. The cost is high, the food chain cost is potentially even higher. In Ottawa, a couple of weeks ago, my front lawn was filled with birds and the other people spray … I do none of that …
- Q. I got the impression a few minutes ago, from something you said ,that as we get further north, the risk from something like West Nile Virus diminishes. My observation is that they further north we go, the more mosquitoes we see.
- A. But, the disease is spreading from the south, so the disease has to get here first. It hasn’t come yet. It is not that because we are north we are immune to it but the disease hasn’t made it. It’s like rabies, too. We have a pretty good line that we know where rabies is. The animals can come but they haven’t made it here.
- Q. If we compare ourselves to northern New England, I think the forested areas of Quebec have a lot more mosquitoes and black flies than they do a hundred miles south. Is it likely that when the virus itself starts being spread by the mosquitoes, because we have so many of them, does it mean that the incidence of the disease in the human population will be a lot higher because we have so much more … ?
- A. My understanding of the way the disease spreads- it is not spread from mosquito to mosquito. It’s spread by a mosquito sucking blood out of an infected animal or bird and then infecting people. The way the virus is going to get you is by the birds and then the people and that kind of thing. If we start having any large number of infected birds making it up here, which is …, then we are at risk. The mosquitoes themselves won’t spread it between themselves. Just because one birds gets it does not mean that all the mosquitoes are going to get it and we are all at risk. At the moment they are monitoring the progression of the disease and they are doing everything that they can to stop it where it is and move it back. Because, as you know, we didn’t have it five years ago. But, we weren’t looking for it either. It’s like this new drug testing thing. They find this new drug test and go back a test everybody’s urine and find that they were actually using the drug but they couldn’t test for it before … so we don’t know what the incidence was but we are trying to move that back. All I am saying is, my advice is to seek advice, but no, but the risk is being monitored for us and as long as the municipality has contact with the public health service, they would inform you of an increasing risk, then you could deal with it. Hearing the hoof beats, you should think about horses.
- Q. How does a crow get West Nile Virus?
- A. It gets infected by a mosquito, which has sucked blood off something else infecting the crow. The mosquito carries the virus.
- Q. Can one municipality spraying affect another area? … Their spraying affect our swallows …
- A. If you kill all the mosquitoes … the birds who feed on mosquitoes move elsewhere …
- Lots of other spraying goes on …
- I found very few mosquitoes in our part of the world. I was surprised this year. I went almost the whole summer without seeing any mosquitoes. We had black flies.
- Q. If I start finding black birds dead in my yard do I just put them in the garbage or is somebody looking after that … ?
- A. At the municipal office you can get the 800 number for full instructions…
- The other members of my potential committee all chose not to be here today. One of them even decided to go to Ottawa a day early so that she would not have to stand up here and not have anything to say. But, I said that I though I could stand up here with five minutes worth of chat with you and I stayed an hour. Which I think …
- Did you want to address another issue dear to your heart?
- I spoke to that earlier. …
Thank you, Jonathan.
We have tea and coffee.
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