How many jobs is Wilmot farmland worth?

We’re getting closer to answering one of the big questions surrounding Waterloo Region’s assembly of almost 800 acres of farmland in Wilmot Township. How many jobs is our farmland worth?

The answer, according to our local business community, is between 8,000 and 10,000, based on the number of people now employed at Toyota’s plants in Cambridge and Woodstock.

Toyota’s footprint in Cambridge began with the South Plant in 1988, while the North Plant followed six years later. Together, they cover about 400 acres of land. In 2005, the West Plant in Woodstock was added to the Japanese automaker’s Ontario operations, swallowing up another 1,000 acres of land.

In a letter released last week, the Business and Economic Support Team of Waterloo Region (BESTWR) noted that “we are on the path to one million residents and this inevitable growth requires investment and, most importantly, jobs. Preparing shovel-ready land is critical and will be pivotal to the ongoing success of our future economy and communities across Waterloo Region.”

The 770 acres to potentially be expropriated in Wilmot Township appears to fit the bill.

“Global site selection is a serious business with an extensive review and qualification process,” the BESTWR letter states. “Considerations are varied and complex, including the identification of a suitable contiguous large parcel that is flat, close to a major power supply, is not in an environmentally protected area and situated within a 45-minute radius of a large, skilled and talented workforce.”

There is no doubt that assembling land like the parcel in Wilmot can attract investment and inject billions of dollars into Waterloo Region’s future economy. But let’s also be clear that the farmland is already doing that.

More than 750,000 Ontarians, or one in 10 of the province’s labour force, is already working in the agrifood supply chain.

Further, farming contributes more than six per cent of Ontario’s total gross domestic product (GDP), to the tune of almost $49 billion. And Ontario alone accounts for $14.5 billion, or almost 42 per cent, of Canada’s contribution to the national food and beverage GDP.

So, yes, assembling a 770-acre parcel of flat land that is close to a major power supply can provide jobs to a nearby workforce. But these jobs, while likely greater in number, would still come at the expense of jobs already connected to that land and contributing to the economy.

Another big question yet to be answered in this story is why these specific lands need to be assembled, when no such need was identified in the region’s just-completed official plan. The secretive silence from elected officials, the lowball offers made to property owners, and the arbitrarily urgent timelines attached to those offers leads us down a dark path.

By consulting with residents on an official plan and then not following the plan at all, an already shaky public confidence is further eroded.

As we hurtle toward that projected population of one million people, perhaps the new question will become, “how many jobs was our faith in the system worth?”