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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom