PelhamToday received the following letter to the editor in response to Wednesday's commentary, Taxpayers' dollars used to plough under crops:
Whilst there is mention of applying good land use planning policies to combat the assault on our dwindling agricultural lands by developers, encouraged by far too many of our so called ‘elected representatives’, still not a word about the real anti-farming bureaucracy who lead the charge of this wanton destruction.
There are politicians who completely own much of the blame, and far too few interested in protecting the best interests of those who elect them. But taxpayers at least have the option of not voting for politicians they no longer trust. To declare an ‘interest’ I can’t think of a single politician at any level of government that I trust to do the right thing anymore.
But where do these good ‘land use policies’ come from? Why, from planning staff who produce hundreds, maybe thousands of recommendations for elected bodies across Ontario to approve.
Good, bad, indifferent it doesn’t matter, because as soon as a council can be pressured into approving them the unelected planning staff deny all responsibility or liability and continue to recommend bad planning whilst totally disregarding the very policies they recommended and claimed were necessary for good planning.
The fox is already in the henhouse as anyone who takes notice can see, with the rapidly growing number of developments which conflict directly with existing good planning policies in every one of our local municipalities.
Andrew Watts
Wainfleet
