Markham councillors are facing new questions on developer influence after voting by a razor-thin margin to kill the town’s foodbelt proposal, wrote the National Post May 15. Professor Jose Etcheverry has been involved in efforts to preserve the land:

Debate ran late into the night at this week’s council meeting and drew a series of eleventh-hour deputations in support of freezing development in the foodbelt, a 2,000-hectare swath of farmland stretching north of Major Mackenzie Drive toward the Oak Ridges Moraine.

But councillors ultimately voted 7-6 in favour of a staff-recommended model that would contain 60 per cent of new development within the current urban boundary and allow the rest to spread north.

“I feel bamboozled. I feel that democracy took a black eye,” said Jose Etcheverry, an environmental studies professor at York University who has launched an academic alliance for agriculture. The compromise, he said, “is sort of like, OK, we know we’re not doing the right thing, but just [we’re going] to sugarcoat it so you have this little morsel."

The complete article is available on the National Post's Web site.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.