Pubdate: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2015 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Christopher Hume Page: GTA 4 MISSISSAUGA, MARIJUANA - A PERFECT PAIR After a false start as a 1970s bedroom community, Mississauga may have finally found its civic calling - industrial agriculture. It could well become the bread basket of the GTA. Where once the talk was all about call centres, today it's aquaponics. As for those branch plants former mayor Hazel McCallion bragged about for years, pretty soon they could all be medical marijuana farms, grow-ops by any other name. About time, too. Mississauga and marijuana seem made for one another. After all, it's got the space; we've got the appetite. So it made sense when a Mississauga council committee recommended that Canada's sixth-largest city adopt regulations for growing pot. "The federal government legalized these operations," Councillor Jim Tovey told the Star's San Grewal, "but we're the ones eventually responsible for where they're located and the enforcement of them." According to Tovey, "It's a public safety issue." He was referring to the growing of pot, not the smoking. His argument is simple: people will raise the stuff regardless, so let's put rules in place to ensure that that occurs safely. "Just look at what happens with illegal grow-ops," Tovey argued. "You have everything from safety issues to what the product is actually being used for. This bylaw will make sure federal regulations are being met." How thoughtful. How progressive. How enlightened. Talk about getting ahead of the curve. You've got to hand it to Mississauga; its flexibility is something to be proud of. It indicates a desire to change with the times, to remain vital. One can only imagine how official Toronto will respond when some well-intentioned would-be pot rancher shows up at city hall seeking permission to raise a crop in some old warehouse in Etobicoke. When a couple of entrepreneurs approached the city last year hoping to open an aquaponic operation, they were turned down. From a Toronto perspective, aquaponics is too close to agriculture to have a place in the city. Why aren't we surprised? Where did the pair end up? Mississauga, of course. Specifically, they rented space in a nondescript industrial park north of Pearson Airport, not as close to customers as hoped, but not prohibitively far. So what's next for Mississauga? Highrise farming? Parking-lot pastures? Strip-mall meadows? Don't laugh; any of these would make as much sense as what's happening now in Mississauga. And given its location at the centre of a distribution network that extends across central and eastern Canada, there's no better spot for suburban agriculture. Another factor is the sheer amount of space available in Mississauga; the low-density zoning regulations that gave rise to that city as we know it have resulted in vast swaths of land that have little purpose beyond accommodating parked cars. Everywhere, weeds flourish; but the wrong sort. Let's not forget, either, that cities such as Toronto and Mississauga face huge financial issues. In both, the costs of maintaining infrastructure have sucked dry the well of property taxes and user fees on which the two communities depend. Already one envisions highrise farms in which livestock are born, raised, slaughtered, packaged and sold without leaving the building. Underground parking garages will be used to grow mushrooms - edible, not magic - and empty warehouses will be turned into mixed-use agricultural operations that specialize in everything from poultry to pork to pot. Meanwhile, Toronto will remain an agriculture-free zone, happy to enjoy the bounty trucked in from the great city to the west. As the sign at the border of Mississauga says: Welcome to the city that grows. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom