But that’s far from all that should happen in the wake of the report from provincial auditor Bonnie Lysyk into how more than 7,400 acres was removed from the Greenbelt.
Under the traditions of parliamentary democracy, it’s the minister responsible for the scandal who should resign.
But in this case, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said “the buck stops with me” so he should resign.
And the land should be put back into the Greenbelt.
And the proposal to allow up to three severances from rural properties to allow houses to be built should be scrapped, Farmers don’t need a flood of complaints from wealthy city slickers building their dream homes in the country. Nor should that land be taken out of production.
There’s yet another issue here: Ontario Agriculture Minister Lisa Thompson.
She has been silent, or muzzled, on these major policy initiatives and scandals.
According to Lysyk’s report, staff at her ministry outlined the losses connected to the land taken out of the Greenbelt, including specialty crops and hundreds of acres of the top-ranked soils in the province.
If Thompson knew this, and failed to tell Ford, Clark and cabinet, she is direlect in her duty to Ontario’s agriculture community.
Mark Reeser, vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, has said in a radio interview, that he has lost trust in the Ford government.
That should obviously include Thompson.
Until now, she has had an outstanding record as a well-informed, hard-working minister of agriculture. She needs to retain that status by resigning as a matter of principle.
