The Manitoba government is funding an environmental organization that promotes organic agriculture and fights large-scale hog barns.
The Manitoba Eco-Network will receive $50,000 per year, conservation minister Oscar Lathlin announced May 15.
Lathlin and Eco-Network executive director Anne Lindsey said the money will help Manitoba citizens more easily learn about environmental issues and will allow Manitoba environmental groups to better lobby the government.
“It’s not really the money so much as the security that’s important,” Lindsey said.
She said the organization has had to fund its activities entirely through donations.
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“We’ve always had to scrape by. Like so many of the organizations in the environmental field, we’ve really had to struggle to keep our basic services alive.”
But the provincial opposition worries that the government is funding a special interest group that is undermining Manitoba’s hog industry.
“It’s very interesting when governments try to encourage industrial development and at the same time fund organizations that are opponents of development,” said Progressive Conservative MLA Jack Penner.
The Manitoba Eco-Network is an umbrella group that represents dozens of small environmental organizations. Its main role is to disseminate information to the public and to help various environmental organizations speak to each other.
It publishes a magazine and has a library that is open to the public.
It has helped set up a number of organic food production and marketing conferences, and has organized a directory of organic producers and certified organic food sellers.
One of its members is Hog Watch, a group that opposes large scale hog barn development and has fought against a number of hog barn projects.
Lindsey said Hog Watch and the Eco-Network are going to pay for a researcher to study the hog barn issue.
“Hopefully that will feed into the government’s thinking about how it deals with intensive livestock operations.”
Lathlin said he wasn’t worried about being too close to an organization that will likely lobby it on issues such as hog industry expansion.
“I think the previous government were often accused of listening to business and maybe sometimes bypassing or overlooking some assessment processes and going directly to developers,” he said.
“The Manitoba Eco-Network represents grassroots people and that’s very important.”
But Penner said it is dangerous to give public money to special interests that fight farmers.
“We must be very careful that we do not allow ourselves to be directed by fear mongering and inaccurate information.”
He said Hog Watch and other environmental groups use misleading information in their attacks on the modern hog industry.
“If this government is now funding organizations that utilize these kinds of tactics, I have concerns.”
