Every once in a while a university, think tank or some other government funded institution presents a report in which it asks for an inquiry into such things as rural poverty or high unemployment. But the provincial government only has to look at its own cynical and made-for-city solutions to find many answers to many problems.

The province reacted to bad management that bordered on criminal negligence in Walkerton by imposing the Nutrient Management Act that was more a political move than sincere protection of the environment. The act didn’t protect urbanites but it gave them a sense that the government was doing something. More important, it plugged up a hole that the media could gnaw at like rats, a festering hole that would hasten a politician’s eventual destruction at the polls. So, politicians approved the act, then went looking for the science.

Five years after the Nutrient Management Act was passed, the rivers that flow through Toronto are still more polluted than rural waterways in Ontario. City sewer systems, though with promises to clean up, pollute more waterways after a big storm than all the farms in eastern Ontario.

The political machinations that have gone on in Ontario have had real consequences for people and their livelihoods in eastern Ontario. The most recent pressure from the Nutrient Management Act has come against the small independent cheese factories that employ 400 people in eastern Ontario.

Forfar Dairy, in Leeds County, has been spreading its whey on three licensed fields with no problems with pollution. The Ministry of Environment has ordered a stop to spreading whey in the four months over the winter because the factory must comply with the regulations. The cost of this solution has been estimated at $100,000 to the cheese factory and is threatening the factory’s very existence. Forfar has 12 permanent and 10 part-time jobs.

The owner of Ivanhoe cheese factory, Bruce Kingston, says government officials are taking a soft approach and are being helpful. But the nutrient management police have turned shy because of strong protests against the act throughout Ontario. In the end, cheese factories could very well be forced to comply with an unnecessary law and there will be no money to help them adjust. Unless they go after it now.

The solution is to look realistically at each case. If a plant is not polluting, let it be. If a plant shows that its disposal of whey is harming the environment, then provide financial assistance to correct the problem because society benefits. The consequence of not doing so will be a loss of more jobs in the dairy industry (Nestle and Hershey have closed shop) and the loss of a legacy of some of the finest cheese this country has ever produced.

"Cheese making is an art," Forfar factory owner Murray Campbell says. Do we want to make it that much harder to find that personal touch on supermarket shelves?