By Jamie MacMaster
When we were kids on the farm, one of the first jobs we could handle during milking time was feeding the calves. It amounted to putting several inches of milk in the bottom of a pail and watching the little buggers siphon it up and bunt the pail for more; sometimes spilling the remaining contents in the process…a guarantee that they would go to bed hungry. On occasion, we would put an extra inch or two of 4.65 per cent b.f. (I’m talking High Plains Ayrshires here) into the bucket and they’d oblige us by slurping it up, and then standing there, legs wide apart, heaving and coughing, too stuffed to move, with a wide-eyed, stunned look on their faces.
When Dad caught us in this act of benevolence, the reprimand went something like this: “Don’t give them too much – they’ll drink until they kill themselves, the stupid sons-of-bitches.” The bull calves were by far the worse…absolute gluttons. They’d pack on the pounds at an Olympic rate, and within a few weeks they were on a one-way trip to the Montreal veal market. Talk about suicidal tendencies.
Now, I’m not about to abandon my admittedly shaky Christian principles, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe there is something to the Hindu belief in reincarnation; the idea that the soul of a living thing survives death to be reborn in a new body. Because if you look at the behaviour of government bureaucrats – their penchant to spill, spoil or drain without any thought for the future – it’s not hard to imagine that, in their previous lives, they were pail-bunters.
I’m not exactly sure when we’re going to hear that hollow, metallic there’s-nothing-left-in-the-bottom-but-bubbles sound in Ontario’s tax-pail, but I don’t think we’ll be waiting much longer. And, when that happens, our tormentors will finally be making their journey to the metaphorical meat market. Bring it on, I say. We’re unlikely to get any relief until it happens.
There is a painful but satisfying irony about it all. The hordes of bureaucrats who are putting rural Ontario out of business under the guise of preserving our natural resources, are extinguishing their own resources in the process. Just like the drip, drip, drip of the leaky faucet that the Toyota-Chick in her gas-guzzler lectures us about, one by one, Ontario’s revenue-generating small businesses are going down the drain. A service station here, a beef farm there, here a drip, there a drip, every where a drip, drip. Old McGuinty has no farms, E, I, E, I, Oops…sorry about that…didn’t want to release Ontario’s new anthem before its expiry date.
Don’t believe me? Take a drive down Old Highway 2…Desolation Highway, Louise and I call it. Closed, closed and closed. For Sale signs tilted and faded so much that you know the guy who pinned them up is in a retirement home or in the ground. Farms, service stations, motels, butcher shops, construction companies…dead and gone. For Sale? Are you kidding? You couldn’t give them away. And it’s the same song on Highway 60…or 7…or 31. Welcome to the face of Rural Ontario: flapping barn-boards, rusting mills and packs of bureaucrats.
But as our wealth-producing businesses expire, publicly funded agencies proliferate and expand their influences. A conservation authority (CA) that 10 short years ago had seven full-time employees now has more than 70. Where it used to concern itself with logs, bogs and frogs, its mandate now includes winter recreation (skating rinks and toboggan slides with part-time employees). The director of one CA, in blissful ignorance, unknowingly highlighted the problem by defending his agency’s expansion and existence thusly: “But we are the largest employer in the township. Dozens of students depend on us for summer jobs”. It’s no wonder that they constantly deem their present facilities ‘inadequate’. How many conservation authorities in the province? How many more publicly funded commissions, boards, agencies, working groups, and task-forces can we bear? Not too many.
One of the best indications that things are ‘going south’ is the surge in rural Ontario’s clandestine economy. And I’m not just talking about cigarettes. Beef, eggs, milk, firewood, plumbing, electricians, roofers, and more can be obtained at less than wholesale prices…and no one needs a bill. Want to know why? Because the arrangement makes good economic sense to the provider and the consumer. It is an acknowledgement between two parties that the third party – the government – contributes nothing to the exchange and erodes the security of the other two parties.
The message of this tax revolt (which couldn’t come at a worse time for cash-starved tax coffers) is something much deeper than plain economics. It is a sign that an ever-increasing portion of the population has some difficulty with the notion that the government is the people and the people are the government. Government is viewed as a tormentor and antagonist – a despicable force not worthy of support.
The government’s reaction to this revenue shortfall will probably involve more scrutiny and more bureaucrats – something that will exacerbate the problem instead of curing it. Because, when you build a better mouse-trap, the mice get smarter.
Jamie MacMaster is a real estate salesperson with Rickerd Realty in Glengarry County, Ont. He is a director of the Ontario Landowners’ Association and owns a hunting/outfitting business. www.uppercanadaoutfitters.com.
