Time is running out ad

Vincent J. Curtis

22 July 21

RE: ssho.ca ad pg A9.  Hamilton Spectator 22 July 21.  This is an ad promoting halting the expansion of the urban boundary in Hamilton.  This is the stuff of California in the 1970s.

The group trying to block urban boundary expansion in Hamilton is certainly well-organized and spectacularly well-funded.  They can afford a full page, full colour ad.

Students of Thomas Sowell can recognize a “vision of the anointed” at a glance in this ad.  The anointed know better than the benighted what to do with the land.  Being morally and intellectually superior, they want to make home-buying decisions for the next generation of Hamiltonians.  Their ad is devoid of data relevant to the issue, and they are otherwise impervious to data and the failed examples of theirs in the past.

Allegedly, the 3300 acres farmland within city boundaries is “prime.”  They do not say what crops are grown on the land presently, what is the dollar value of the crop yield, and how much in taxes is paid to the city for the land.

Let me assure Hamiltonians that Canada has no dearth of farmland or food production, and that 3300 acres cannot feed a city of half a million people.  If that land were turned over to residential development, the GDP produced on the land then would vastly exceed its economic value now, to say nothing of the vastly higher tax revenues to city coffers.

To say nothing of the adverse consequences of denying new home buyers the homes they want at prices they can afford.

Hamilton, The Ambitious City, is destined to become even greater if it doesn’t shoot itself in the head.

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