By Randy Hillier
Wednesday, March 22, 2006The continuing war against Tobacco farmers and smoking can no longer be tolerated by rural Ontario Landowners. Your governments escalating attack against personal freedoms, choice and our ability to earn a livelihood from legal crops is an affront to justice and democracy.
The Ontario Landowners' association (OLa) demand that the Ontario governments' war against rural people cease immediately, and the proposed province wide smoking ban legislation be dropped. Furthermore, the OLa demands appropriate and timely compensation for Ontario Tobacco Farmers who have shouldered the burden and hardships created by your unjust attack on their industry.
While your government reaps over 1.3 billion dollars in tax revenues from the labours of these farmers, and the multi nationals frolic in record profits of over 1.5 billion dollars; the tobacco farmers face the loss of their farms, livelihoods and the stress and anxiety of financial destruction.
Should this legislation not be immediately dropped and a suitable exit strategy offered, the Landowners will take action on Monday March 27, 2006.
The farmers with the support of the OLa will begin selling their tobacco to any and all buyers, outside of the marketing boards and without regard to licences. The first of these demonstrations will begin in Delhi Ontario.
Less than a generation ago, Ontario grew and harvested over 250 million pounds of tobacco. By 2005, the tobacco crop had plummeted to 85-million pounds, and imports that were once limited to 5 per cent of the domestic market are now approaching 25%. The painful and incremental erosion that has befallen Ontario's once prosperous tobacco farmers is the result of excessive taxation, smuggling, imports, restrictive trade and economic practices, and unjust legislation, compounded with falling prices. The effect is the drastic reduction in tobacco farmers from 5000 to about 500 and a looming total collapse of a once prosperous industry.
The flue-cured tobacco marketing board in concert with specific government departments negotiated and fostered an environment of corporate monopoly which stifled the free marketplace, lowered crop sizes, encouraged increased imports, and created the era of agri-business cannibals to prey upon Canadian farmers. Legislation forces all Tobacco growers to belong to this marketing board and furthermore, requires them by law to sell their harvest to the marketing board. Only government & board licensed buyers may attend the auction sales.
However, tobacco farmers are not the only casualties of the agri-monopolies. Less than a generation ago over twenty tobacco leaf processors and cigarette manufactures competed to purchase the tobacco crop at three auction houses. This competition insured a healthy and profitable Tobacco industry and significant employment and secondary economic spin-offs. In 2006, only three multi-national corporations remain to purchase Canadian grown tobacco and they control 94% of the marketplace.
(Market share of Canadian cigarettes trade See: Cigarette Brands Sold in Canada, 2003: Market share of manufacturers and cigarette types. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, June 2004.)
This monopolization has driven the price of tobacco below production costs and moved all but one processing and one manufacturing plant offshore. The loss of employment for thousands of residents and of tax revenue for the communities has inflicted severe economic pain throughout Southern Ontario.
While the tobacco Farmers and employment die, the federal and provincial governments continue to derive 7.8 Billion dollars a year in taxation, and the big three companies earn record profits of 1.5 billion dollars in 2003.
Government tax revenues, and Industry earnings Please see: cigarette Industry earnings in Canada. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, June 2004.
People need only to visit the tobacco belt to witness the path of economic destruction that is being laid out for the Canadian people by farm groups, commodity and marketing boards, Ontario government bureaucrats and multinationals. It is a path leading to food dependency, loss of manufacturing plants, employment, and the ultimate forcing of farmers into serfdom. Democracy and sovereignty are being traded away for the profitability of a monopoly. Canadian farms and communities are being denied the ability to prosper and left to debt, apathy and the loss of their heritage to feed the cannibals appetite.
Randy Hillier, President, Ontario Landowners association
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