The entire Toronto Urban Agriculture Program is under attack.
Last week, consultants, hired by the Mayor as part of the City Services Review, reported their findings in determining which services need to be reduced or cut entirely.
What they found was that 90% of services are in fact core or essential. Unable to find savings, the consultants are recommending cuts to recycling and environmental programs — including the Urban Agriculture program, which allows residents and community groups to grow healthy, fresh and affordable food on excess City parkland.
When did investments in our future become costs?
Hundreds of people went to City Hall last week to ask the committees to reject service cuts. But councilors have refused to take anything off the chopping block.
So now we have to wait for September, when the Mayor and his Executive Committee will decide if recycling programs, urban forestry goals and urban agriculture programs are ‘gravy’, or the building blocks of a progressive, sustainable, world-class city that this town wants to become.
