A proposed cattle slaughter plant in Winnipeg is likely dead because Ottawa has backed away from its $10 million commitment to the project, says Manitoba agriculture minister Stan Struthers.
“My fear is that the project is dead,” said Struthers, who learned July 13 that the federal government was no longer supporting the project.
“All this work has been done and then the federal Conservatives pull the rug out from everybody’s feet. It’s amazing that any farmer still votes Conservative after seeing the kind of treatment that they’ve been getting from this government.”
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The federal government announced in the fall of 2009 that it would provide a $10 million loan to help Keystone Processors refurbish a hog plant in Winnipeg to make the facility suitable for cattle slaughter.
Keystone Processors planned to slaughter 250 to 500 cattle per day in a federally inspected beef slaughter facility in Winnipeg’s east end.
The company intended to spend $25 million to renovate a Maple Leaf Foods plant, using the federal loan, provincial funding and check-off dollars from Manitoba cattle producers.
Keystone was the flagship project of the Manitoba Cattle Enhancement Council (MCEC), created by the provincial government in 2006 to expand beef slaughter capacity in Manitoba.
Keystone Processors managers were targeting the growing market for kosher and halal meat in North America, but Struthers said the slaughter plant probably can’t move forward without the federal government loan.
“I’m as frustrated about this (decision) as I know cattle producers are,” Struthers said.
“Slaughter capacity is a fundamental issue to be dealt with if we’re going to have a sustainable, long-term beef industry in Manitoba.”
The federal government announced the loan to Keystone Processors as part of its Slaughter Improvement Program.
However, federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said the government lost confidence in the Winnipeg project over the last 20 months.
“Since the conditional approval of funding for Keystone in October 2009, our department has conducted 10 separate reviews of its application,” he said in an e-mail.
“We had expressed numerous concerns … and it was made clear that a strong, viable business plan was necessary in order to ensure an investment of federal taxpayers dollars.”
After several deadline extensions, the federal government decided that Keystone Processors’ business plan “had not met the appropriate criteria to ensure the responsible use of taxpayers dollars,” Ritz added.
Shelly Glover, MP for St. Boniface, met with the leaders of MCEC and Keystone Processors and said the plan for the slaughter plant had changed drastically.
“The initial proposal and what they had in the end were completely different,” she said.
“As you’ve probably seen, the building (Maple Leaf Foods hog plant) doesn’t even exist anymore. So it’s not at all the same project that was presented.”
Glover accused Struthers of playing politics leading up to Manitoba’s provincial election this fall.
“Minister Struthers has misrepresented, in my opinion, what has gone on,” she said.
Representatives of MCEC and Keystone Processors did not return calls for this story.
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