Distilling difficulties
Dear Editor:
An open letter to Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott.
Two years ago you came into the Elora Distilling Company during the election campaign and I told you of the immense struggles facing the distilling industry. You told me to write it down and send it to you. You forwarded it to Premier Doug Ford and nothing happened.
We just finished our best season ever; sales were fantastic and all the profit went to the government – 52 per cent of the price of our product sitting on the shelf in our store is tax.
Small distilleries are being crushed under a tax system built for multinationals producing million-litre batches not hundred -litre batches
We pay a spirits tax to the provincial government which is 61.5% (of our original price) and excise duty to the federal government, which is up to 20%, and then we pay 13% HST on those taxes.
If we are lucky to get our product on the shelf at the LCBO, which is very hard, we give up 72% of the price to the government. We can only charge so much and then people won’t buy our products.
These tax rates come from a long history between the government and the large producers (think names like Smirnoff, Bombay Saphire, Crown Royal and Bacardi’s).
The craft movement struggled to get going in Ontario because the government and big business had a solid relationship. A monopoly of production and distribution that is wrapped up in a story that this is what’s best for Ontario. Small producers were shut out until the government was sued in 2009. Craft distilling finally started here but it was a grudging introduction.
As a small firm making our products with local ingredients by hand from day one, we have paid the same tax rate as big multinational companies that are producing millions of litres a year (e.g. the new Crown Royal plant near Sarnia will produce up to 20 million litres a year).
Beer and wine producers in the province don’t suffer this crushing system. They are on a graduated scale; hardly any tax at the start and more as you go.
In BC the government there has said small producers are great, they employ local people, they buy local farmers’ grains and produce and they create local tourist destinations. For these reasons, the first 50,000 litres are free of spirits tax. Wow!
After lobbying the Ontario government for 15 years, small distillers have managed to get a small rebate that amounts to less than 20% of the spirits tax.
Although our sales are great, we have been losing money for four years and in truth I’m not sure how much longer we can do this. Should the government be the tool of large corporations to crush all competition? Please allow us to thrive and eliminate the spirits tax on the first 50,000 litres.
Marty Van Vliet,
CEO, Elora Distilling Company
Not the ‘wild west’
Dear Editor:
RE: Centre Wellington will regulate short-term rentals, Oct. 3.
My husband and I have successfully operated a small Airbnb in the basement apartment of our home in Fergus for the past seven years.
We do not have guests staying there unless we are at home, with the exception of a few of our longer-term guests whom we have gotten to know well. Our neighbours know this and have never had to complain.
We participated in one of the sessions run by MacLaren Municipal Consultants, along with several other Airbnb owners. We were hoping that the consultants would have used at least some of the recommendations and comments made in our lively and meaningful discussion in the final report.
Instead, this article highlights negative comments from some residents who say that “Airbnbs are the wild west of the accommodation industry” and that “Hosts claim to live in the home but get around it.”
We are aware that some Airbnb owners are negligent and are not present at the site. This should surely be regulated, with rules about noise regulations included. Airbnbs need not be a disruption to any neighbourhood. Even guests at hotels can be noisy and disruptive.
We would like to have the municipality help with the formation of a CW Airbnb Owners Association, where we could support one another. Note that most of us would have to do major retrofitting to comply with rules for long-term rentals, so that is why we choose to only do short-term.
Like many of our Airbnb colleagues, we love Centre Wellington and want to share it with others. Airbnb’s original mandate was “house sharing”. We have had guests who have attended weddings and funerals, family gatherings, sports and arts events, medical and pet appointments. We have hosted construction, trades and hospital workers (including during the pandemic), even senior management at Groves hospital.
We feel we have served our community well and would only accept a fair and reasonable licensing fee if one is put in place.
Felicia Urbanski,
Fergus
‘High-speed racetrack’
Dear Editor:
Winston Churchill Boulevard residents in Erin don’t get any help from our mayor and/or the OPP to enforce traffic violations, speeding, heavy truck traffic exceeding posted weight restrictions, damaging roads that we, the residents, pay for as part of our taxes.
There is a 60km/h speed limit posted south of Bush Street, changing to 70km/h at my location, changing to 60km/h again south of Olde Baseline, changing to 50km/h and 40km/h at King Road.
OPP surveillance is often noticed at the 40km/h section, it’s downhill and easy money. After many emails with our mayor and the OPP, eventually a cruiser was send to my location to check out my complaint, parked at the bottom (out of sight/hidden) of my driveway. A truck was stopped for speeding. While ticketing the driver, another cruiser arrived and parked on the shoulder visible to traffic and traffic slowed down, noticing the cruiser.
After ticketing a waste truck driver for smoking, the officer of the cruiser explained an issue with his in-car internet reception and left my area to reestablish his post at 10th Sideroad. No OPP follow-up was offered and there’s been no change in traffic violations since.
Winston Churchill Boulevard was quietly redesignated a major thoroughfare – from a gravel, chip-and-stone surface with little traffic – without formal notification.
Now, between 6 and 9am and 4 and 7pm, it is a high-speed racetrack, mainly for commuters from Orangeville and other built-up neighbourhoods. This condition will only worsen, once the 1,000-plus new houses built in Erin are occupied.
My only choice is to move, reluctantly of course, unless something gets done about the speeding traffic here. Our mailbox is located on the opposite side of Winston Churchill Boulevard and I have instructed my family to no longer cross the road to retrieve the mail, which only I will do at night.
Mike Orlok,
Erin
Boot drive successful
Dear Editor:
The Fergus Firefighters Association extends a heartfelt thank you to the community for their continued support of our Muscular Dystrophy Boot Drive on Sept. 14.
The Fergus Fire Fighters Association has a long-standing history of raising funds for Canadians with neuromuscular disorders. In 2024, we celebrate 52 years of supporting Muscular Dystrophy Canada. Thanks to our community’s generosity, Muscular Dystrophy Canada has successfully connected 1,647 times with locals and funded 13 equipment requests for clients in the area.
Thank you, Centre Wellington. We will see you all again next year.
Fergus Firefighters Association,
Fergus
‘Disgusted’
Dear Editor:
I was disgusted by the cartoon published in the editorial pages of the Sept. 26 issue of the Wellington Advertiser. It is humourless, hateful, demeaning and offensive.
What place does a cruel parody on a U.S. political figure have in a small rural Canadian newspaper?
This cartoon falls way below the journalistic standards that we have come to expect from the Advertiser.
You had better get used to liking Donald Trump. He is almost certainly going to be the 47th president of our cousins to the south.
Tim Wood,
Fergus
Thrice taxed
Dear Editor:
RE: Minimum $10 fee coming to county waste sites on Jan. 1, Oct. 3.
Enough with three taxes on the same service. Landfill is part of the county budget that is incorporated into our taxes (tax one).
We have to pay for the garbage pick-up service by purchasing special garbage bags (tax two), and to add insult to injury, we now have to pay a minimum $10 to take our garbage to the dump (tax three).
Comparing ourselves with other municipalities is scant justification for overcharging. Why not compare Wellington County rates to Grey County rates, and charge for garbage pick up at the same rate as Grey County?
Wayne Baker,
Wellington North
World Polio Day
Dear Editor:
As we honor two incredible milestones toward reaching a polio-free world this year, we must note that neither would have been possible without vaccines.
Thanks to their safety and efficacy, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) southeast Asia region, which includes India, is celebrating a decade free of wild polio, and its region of the Americas, which includes the United States, is celebrating 30 years of the same.
Both achievements result from large-scale immunization campaigns spearheaded by Rotary International service clubs and its Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partners. Thanks to their continued efforts, wild polio only circulates in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and polio cases have been reduced by 99.9% worldwide over the past 35-plus years.
Despite this progress, polio anywhere remains a threat everywhere.
As a Rotary member of the Fergus-Elora, I urge readers to join us in our mission to end polio for good. Your support is crucial in ensuring that this paralyzing disease does not return to polio-free countries, thereby protecting children everywhere.
On World Polio Day, Oct. 24, Rotary calls for your continued public support.
Your contributions can help fund the end of polio, and your efforts to share factual information can encourage vaccine acceptance and uptake, preventing polio outbreaks in the future.
Visit endpolio.org to learn more about how you can get involved.
Robert Galloway,
Past president of the Fergus-Elora Rotary Club
Bricks tell a history
Dear Editor:
Histories – stories people tell. A lot of history is being lost.
Centre Wellington is made of quite a few stories, old and new. My letter is about the bricks of the old Groves Memorial Community Hospital. These bricks individually or on the whole are each full of stories, the history of the people of this area.
Bricks from the old Groves hospital were sold as a fundraiser. Money raised will go to much needed materials for the new hospital. People told these stories to the ladies standing at the table.
From people deciding to bring their kids to buy a brick because they were born there to a friend that was on vacation and asked her friend here to buy one for her.
Stories/history all gone. They should be recorded. Hopefully someone will writing them down to be kept for years to come.
Lucy Dyment,
Fergus
Battery facility
Dear Editor:
The battery storage facility slated for Belwood is quietly being slipped into the south end of Fergus on prime agricultural property.
This is a short distance from the grand entrance the township wants to put in for Fergus and the very large developments on both sides of Highway 6.
What is being done to contain the property in the event of a spill or air pollution over the town of Fergus in the event of fire?
These battery facilities do not have a good track record in the U.S. when it comes to fires.
Watch this one very closely, folks.
J. Alexander,
Fergus
‘Anti-war’
Dear Editor:
RE: Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong’s comments about Israel’s legal right to wage war.
The young men of Hamas, who likely broke free from the Gaza prison for the first time, arguably also had a legal right to attack Israel after decades of illegal occupation and blockades. One war crime does not justify another. International law should be used to prevent, not justify conflict.
Should we begin in the Roman period, the pogroms of Europe, or Oct. 7? History teaches us that further violence will not end this cycle. Settling territorial disagreements in favour of those who can murder the best promotes sociopathy and is a gross violation of our alleged western values.
I fear that we have abandoned our historic role as a respected peacekeeper, tethered to a U.S. military machine that’s been happily captured by the Israel lobby.
The irony surrounding this conflict is palpable. War mongers around the world cry out for each other’s demise, legitimizing each other’s existence and confirming each other’s fears in a downward spiral.
Russia is condemned for annexing Ukraine while Israeli settlers occupy Palestine. The Zionist dream of a Jewish ethnostate suffers from the same racism that fueled the holocaust. Democracies plant the seeds of despotism by violating their cherished principles abroad.
I am neither anti-Semitic nor pro-Palestinian. I am anti-war. All is lost if we continue to behave like the bacteria in my shoe. Race, religion and state are mere ideologies that must serve, not destroy us.
If war is politics by other means, our politicians need to do much better.
Richard Baumgarten,
Georgian Bluffs