The Ontario Federation of Agriculture fears Premier Doug Ford’s government is mounting a “direct attack” on family farms and the growing agri-food sector worth almost $40 billion annually to the provincial economy.

Bill 66, the Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, which would change the province’s Planning Act to make it easier for municipalities to designate land for new businesses more quickly, would result in more prime farmland being “paved over,” federation president Keith Currie warns in a new letter to Economic Development Minister Todd Smith.

“While Bill 66 claims to ‘give businesses more flexibility to create jobs right here at home,’” the new powers would allow local councils to pass “open for business’ planning bylaws with provincial consent if a development would create at least 50 jobs, Currie added.

The government says its intention is to attract jobs, improve the supply of housing in the GTA, and give municipalities more say in where developments can go, with faster timelines, although critics have warned this will erode the 1.8 million acre Greenbelt around Toronto.

“This proposal suggests that agricultural land should no longer be used for agriculture to make way for commercial and industrial businesses…Ontario’s prime agricultural lands must be separated from non-compatible land uses,” Currie continued in the four-page letter posted on the federation’s website.

“To do otherwise will be death by a thousand cuts for the family farm businesses…and food processing businesses located throughout Ontario.”

Smith’s office did not reply to a request for comment Tuesday but Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark has said municipalities need more “flexibility…on how and where they grow.”

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture represents about 38,000 family farms, most in areas represented by Ford’s majority of Progressive Conservative MPPs.

Currie noted just 5 per cent of Ontario’s land is suitable for agriculture and the province has lost 1.5 million acres of prime farmland since 1996.

“If we lose agricultural land to development, it is gone forever.”

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