THE OBSERVER | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 3
Page Three
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Wellesley town hall
From the archives
Following a council decision this week, a town hall meeting to discuss residents concerns with township spending will be held April 26, 7-9 p.m. at the Linwood Community Centre. The meeting will discuss the 2023 budget openly between residents, council and the township staff. The township is searching for a moderator for the event.
Don Martin, an Elmira native whose business ventures and volunteer activities shaped the very structure of the town, died this week at St. Mary’s Hospital in Kitchener at the age of 79. Perhaps more than any other in the past half century, Martin was instrumental in shaping development in Elmira. From the Apr. 6, 2013 edition of The Observer
Flair Airlines scales back growth forecast Bill Atwood
the end of 2023. However, according to CEO Stephen Jones, plans for a third YKF-based aircraft have been delayed due to Airborne Capital’s seizure, while the total number of planes it will have to end the year will only be 21. Jones said it is unlikely the airline will get the seized aircraft back. “We would love to have them back, but the lessors have made their own sort of decisions. You saw the nature of the activity that went on. It’s a very difficult conversation, but we would love to have the aircraft back,” Jones said. “They are now in the possession of the lessor, so it’s the lessor’s decision.” Jones said the airline is still committed to Waterloo Region despite slowing growth plans. “We are the only airline in Kitchener-Waterloo of any consequence, and we believe in it. It’s an investment for us and that we’re having to work together with the region to develop the markets and I’m not going to say it’s an easy journey, but we are committed to it. So we’ve had to cut our cloth to fit the circumstances, and they’re unfortunate circumstances. We’ve had to make adjustments across the entire network, not just to Kitchener-Waterloo, but I think our presence speaks for itself,” he said.
Observer Staff
FLAIR AIRLINES HAS SCALED BACK its growth forecast for flights from the Region of Waterloo International Airport. An expected jump of 30 per cent over 2022’s numbers by the end of the summer is now 15 per cent. At a press conference last week, Flair also announced it is suspending its route between YFK and Edmonton. Following some turbulence that included the seizure by creditors last month of four of the company’s 22 jetliners, Flair says its operations are returning to normal. “Some of the growth we actually had originally planned for Kitchener-Waterloo in 2023 will not all be coming through. ... We will be making some adjustments to our spring summer schedule as a result of the events a few weeks ago. Kitchener-Waterloo is a really critical key market for Flair,” said chief commercial officer Garth Lund at an online announcement March 31. While the airline will launch routes to Abbotsford, BC, this summer and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in the winter, it will have fewer aircraft stationed at the regional airport than originally planned. Flair’s goal was three jets based at YKF by the end of June and 30 aircraft nationwide by
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Josh Boersen is the vice-chair of the Ontario Grain Farmers who farms near Gadshill.
Leah Gerber
Farmers unhappy with Ottawa’s handling of Russian fertilizer tariffs Leah Gerber Observer Staff
FARMERS REMAIN UNHAPPY WITH THE Canadian government over a decision not to directly return the money paid by farmers for a fertilizer tariff imposed last year in retaliation against Russia for the Ukrainian invasion. In March last year, the federal government placed a 35 per cent tariff on all imports from Russia and Belarus (which supports Russia), including fertilizer. “Last year when Russia invaded Ukraine, they lost their most-favoured-na-
tion status from Canada and a lot of farmers had already prepaid in the fall of 2021 for fertilizer that just was going to be shipped in the spring,” said Brendan Byrne, chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario. “So by the time that fertilizer came in from Russia in the spring, and tariffs had been applied to it, and that had to be paid before it would be allowed into Canadian waters. So a lot of farmers ended up paying a tariff bill that would not affect Russia, it would only affect them.” He said that the tariff paid by Canadian farmers to receive the fertilizer
they already paid for had little or no impact on Russian producers. “We had hoped that when the tariff came in, that it would kind of get worked out between the government and the actual fertilizer [distributing] companies. But because it didn’t, then the fertilizer companies passed it along to the farmer.” Byrne said the amount of tariff paid by individual farmers ranged from the hundreds to the tens of thousands of dollars. In December, the federal government announced that Canada was sending $115 million in tariff
revenues to restore energy infrastructure in Ukraine. Josh Boersen is the vice-chair of the Ontario Grain Farmers’ association and a grain and chicken farmer near Gadshill. He says he had to pay around $10,000 extra because of the tariff, noting one of his suppliers honoured the original price quoted, while another did not. “It comes right out of the bottom line. I don’t know that we cut anything specifically – there was a loss in profits that we could realize to reinvest in the business, so it came right out of the bottom line,” he said. → FARMERS 15
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