GRAVEL PITS & THE DOUG FORD GOVERNMENT

Yesterday the Waterloo Region Record carried the following Opinion piece from Luisa D'Amato titled "With a new plan to cut "red tape", Ford hurts his own rural base". Luisa quite interestingly ties in the basic contradiction facing both the Liberal and the Conservative Party. Their biggest donors are corporate Canada but it is the everyday middle and lower working classes who have the bulk of the votes. Therefore both these parties and maybe especially the Conservatives (showing my bias here) try to sell themselves to Ontario and Canadian voters while at the same time assuring corporate and business leaders who they are really working for.

Luisa accurately indicates that the aggregate industry are always lobbying and looking for fewer restrictions on what they view as their unbridled right to make money wherever they want and if the gravel is ten feet from your backyard that's just fine with them. O.K. maybe it's more accurate to say that Ms. D'Amato has connected the contradiction between fewer restrictions on the gravel industry and rural Ontario citizens having their quality of life damaged. Luisa suggests that water quality and gravel trucks on rural roads are the two big issues for those local residents. I would add noise and visual aesthetics. Gravel pits are ugly and do nothing to assist either tourism, heritage viewscapes or simply the inherent beauty of the countryside.

As Luisa states rural Ontario is the very heart of the Progressive Conservative support base. Wouldn't that be astounding if rural residents began to understand that the Conservative Party is a friend to the aggregate industry, not to them.