If it’s supposed to be rural funding why has it ended up in the GTA?

That’s the question Oxford MPP and agriculture critic Ernie Hardeman said he asked Premier Kathleen Wynne, who is also Minister of Agriculture and Food, during question period Monday.

Hardeman said he wants to know why she earmarked funds from the Rural Economic Development (RED) Program to four bakery businesses operating as a consortium located in Toronto, Markham and Woodbridge.

“My first question was how she justifies spending this money earmarked for rural Ontario in downtown Toronto,” Hardeman said Tuesday.

He said Wynne seemed to not understand the fund was “to give a leg-up to develop smaller town’s economies.”

The funds, officially announced by Wynne on September 13, will be used to help create 100 new jobs, fund bakery equipment, information management systems and conduct market research.

Hardeman said the RED Program is one of few funding programs available to rural Ontario and should be kept that way.

According to Hardeman, the RED program guidelines define rural as “all of Ontario with the exception of the Greater Toronto Area and eight larger urban centres.”

However, Mark Cripps, a spokesperson for Wynne who spent Tuesday at the International Plowing Match in Mitchell, explained that communities and lower tier municipalities with a population of less than 100,000 within the GTA or within the eight large urban areas, are considered “rural.”

“We are making these investments to bring more locally grown food to urban neighbourhoods, because we know our farmers feed cities,” he wrote in an email. “Our communities rely on our rural, and rural on our urban.”

He also claims that the Woodbridge announcement was part of an old Rural Economic Development program under the former Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs combined ministry.

“That fund included money for food processing,” he said.

The last funding announcement for the Woodbridge partnership, designed to create 100 jobs, was then valid, he said.

“These are companies that have strong roots in rural Ontario, developing way to support local food in Prince Edward County,” he said.

He added the Ontario PCs are “playing politics with people’s livelihoods.”

heather.rivers@sunmedia.ca