I wish I could say the same thing..... but that's a me issue.     I know it's not the same situation - but falling in line with the adapt or die model. Does anyone here remember the skiiing/snowboarding issue in the late 80's early 90's   Without a long winded story, the skiing community quickly found out had they not adopted, got with the times, and understood the shift in the landscape when they did, they were not going to have anywhere to go skiing in Ontario anymore. Hills would be reduced to almost none - and it was going to go bye bye.   Fast forward today, the hills survived, skiing survived, snowboarding out numbers skiiers 5-1 or more, and life moved forward.   I know this does not translate perse to the issue we're having, but the point is, somehow somewhere, we need to start thinking outside of the box, being receptive to those discussions, stop believing we've done "everything" we know, we know, we know, and start being more open to broader discussions and ideas.    

Be careful what you wish for. USA diary industry uses hormones and steroids that have been banned her for 25 years. I won't even buy any USA milk. Sometimes cheap chocolate milk on shelves is from USA, I avoid it. They also get huge subsidies from government too from general coffers to farm. Dairy farmers price for milk and retail price isn't connected. You could pay farmers half of what they get now and retail price wouldn't be any different. Saying chicken price is going to go up 25 percent at retail level because of bird flu in USA affecting hatching egg supply and imports into our country. Our farm price here hasn't gone up at all this year. It's been proven we have a safer food supply and sm doesnt cost general tax payer anything.  Without it our country side will be dead and our food supply heavily compromised and not safe. Americans were paying table eggs in our country this spring for 1/3 price of USA ones. 

Most of us on here have been having these exact same convo's year after year since the days of OTC and HCS, where most of us met, so for well over 20 years. Buy rights from what was posted the OFSC should of been done 20 years ago lol. I don't know about you, but I've been riding a lot of totally awesome trails since then. The worst season I had in the last 20+ was 2 years ago because I had to trailer 6+hours north every time to ride, luckily I was able to afford to do so. Even during covid I rode, mostly off trail backwoods and trails away from town but I rode a lot.   Doom and gloom isn't new to the sport in Ontario, thank god for the volunteers that haven't jumped ship yet and for the new volunteers taking place of the ship jumpers. 🍺

Of course our out to lunch out of touch liberal gov totally screwed our country over for the last 10 years in every way. But to not think Trumps wacky on and off tariff policies are not further effecting our economy is a bit of a stretch.    As I said I don't feel decreasing the trail system was the right direction to go in, I think there was other avenues to take. But I'm no longer involved in putting the volunteer time in to try and make things happen as I feel they should. But totally understand why the choices that were made were made, they're not out to lunch or irrational, they're just not choices I would have made ....    Personally my plan would have been pausing/limiting a % of grooming hour funding for each district to keep pace with current seasonal permit sales. It would of left the door open for outside operational funding to be done locally by clubs and districts, and for districts and clubs to pick and choose where they centered their grooming efforts on the fly, taking landowners, weather/trail conditions and ridership in consideration.