We, the people, are full of trouble and incongruities. Sometimes we’re only a little better than children. This is reinforced with observations from current events.
Last month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, like a voice crying in the wilderness, announced that the herbicide glyphosate does not cause cancer. So why all those huge banner headlines last year blaring that the herbicide does cause cancer? Because the World Health Organization said so. Or did it? The WHO said there was “limited evidence for a link to cancer” in humans. But who remembers that?
We tend to remember the things that scare us to remind us of what to avoid. The “limited evidence” link still means a link and if the two are linked, then one caused the other. So we get screaming, banner headlines. It will now take a mountain of marketing to scrub that fearful image of glyphosate from our minds.
Doesn’t seem fair, does it?
I had the opportunity recently to interview an animal activist, curious as I was about their motives. The activist told me that I don’t connect with animals because if I did I would realize that animals should have the same rights as people. I wasn’t offended to learn of my handicap. I was delighted. I like bacon, steak and lamb.
The activist offered the analogy of the rabbit and an apple. Give a young child a rabbit and an apple and the child will eat the apple and play with the rabbit. Except that the rabbit is a vicious rodent. Squeeze it too hard and it bites. I’m not sure I like the idea of giving human rights to animals that will attack and have no remorse or chance of rehabilitation if they wound or kill. When people act like that we call them psychopaths and put them in a cage like a wild animal.
The province has just announced it is putting the brakes on $3.8 billion in solar and wind power projects because Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault said their experts have just figured out that it was “common sense” to stop the projects. Common sense doesn’t require any special insights. It’s common sense. I suspect their experts were looking toward the next election in two years and seeing their premier’s approval rating at 16 % and noticing that no one but environmentalists on Red Bull saw the virtue in a strategy of “everything we build will lose money.” The last time everything I built lost money was when I was in Grade 10 wood shop. So, who are these people running the show?
The Minister of Agriculture stubbornly clings to the “precautionary principle” when it comes to neonicotinoid-treated corn and soybean seeds. But had his Ontario Liberal government used the same principle on the outrageous Green Energy Act, taxpayers would have saved a fortune and the province wouldn’t be so far in the hole that we’re starting to make Greece look good.
This is not to disparage anyone who has an operating wind turbine. The truth of the matter is that even though the provincial green energy plan is in the same orbit as a strategy to nationalize snowblowing, anyone looking for an opportunity was justified in signing up. As much as I fought against the Green Energy Act, I would have signed up if the opportunity had come my way. It’s not morally wrong to take advantage of a senseless money-wasting program. The program you really need might never come along anyway. Dumb laws or programs might be ugly as sin but not sinful. (For anyone under 30, a sin is any deliberate action or thought that offends God. For anyone under 20, God is the reason you are here. For anyone under 10, it’s amazing that this interests you).
A migrant workers’ advocacy group is howling about the injustice of the foreign farm workers’ program. But the advocacy group is also anti-capitalist. So, when it comes to Jamaicans and Mexicans voluntarily coming to Canada to work and provide for their families, the advocacy group is against them having that job in the first place. So the migrant workers’ biggest enemy is the group that says it’s here to help.
It’s telling that socialist advocacy groups that whine about workers’ rights and exaggerate and fabricate the issues have never risked their own time and money to start a business — but are first in line for a government grant.
Patrick Meagher is editor of Farmers Forum and can be reached at editor@farmersforum.com.
