Manitoba’s farmers are lining up, literally, to take a stand against Bill 17, the government’s plan to make the hog moratorium permanent in three regions of the province.
When Bill 17 goes to a legislative committee for public input beginning May 29, Manitoba’s hog farmers will be there, en masse, to protest what they’ve labelled the anti-farm bill.
As of May 23, more than 125 presenters had registered to address the committee. And when the queue forms outside the committee room at Manitoba’s legislature, it will likely be longer.
“I think it will be very close to 200 presenters, if not more,” said Ralph Eichler, MLA from Lakeside and the agriculture critic for Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party. Eichler has sent letters to farmers across the province, encouraging them to speak before the committee.
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It will take days to get through all the presenters, Eichler added, because each speaker is permitted 15 minutes at the microphone.
As a further indicator of producer anger over this legislation, a crowd estimated at 400 attended the Manitoba Pork Council rally May 22, in Morris, Man., calling attention to the flaws of Bill 17.
The controversial bill will legislate a permanent moratorium on hog barn expansion in 28 rural municipalities and parts of seven others in southeastern Manitoba, the Red River Valley and the Interlake region. Manitoba’s NDP government maintains the legislation is necessary to limit the volume of nutrients from hog manure that flow into Lake Winnipeg.
In spite of those good intentions, Bill 17 has few admirers.
“The bill will accomplish absolutely nothing, as far as cleaning up Lake Winnipeg,” said Rolf Penner, a hog farmer near Morris and a former commentator for the Frontier Centre, a conservative think-tank in Winnipeg. “They (the NDP) are really playing to their really hard-core environmentalists.”
Leaders of Manitoba’s environmental movement, however, are also unhappy with the bill. On May 22, Glen Koroluk, the regional co-ordinator for the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, introduced www.friendlymanitoba.org.
The website counters Manitoba Pork’s new website, www.unfriendlymanitoba.ca, which hammers the NDP government for unfairly blaming hog farmers for the ills of Lake Winnipeg.
Koroluk’s website, in contrast, states that Bill 17 doesn’t go far enough to protect Lake Winnipeg and Manitoba’s family farmers.
“This current government is in a bind because they came with a piece of legislation that doesn’t please anyone,” Koroluk said at a news conference at the Forks in downtown Winnipeg to launch the website. “It won’t save the environment and it won’t protect Lake Winnipeg.”
The Liberal party of Manitoba is also against the legislation, describing it as a policy of failure.
“When you’ve got a government which is going to put on a moratorium, very often it’s because the government’s own policies, with respect to managing the issue, have failed,” said Jon Gerrard, leader of Manitoba’s Liberal party.
The government should be taking a scientific approach, Gerrard said, and study the best practices on a small watershed, then apply that knowledge to the larger Lake Winnipeg watershed.
“We have to make sure we’re working with a knowledge of what the science says,” he added.
In addition to the usual critics of government policy, The Winnipeg Free Press and the dean of the University of Manitoba’s agriculture department have slammed the moratorium as foolhardy.
That leads to the question of why the government is going ahead with this legislation, if Bill 17 is being attacked from all sides?
“There is a diverse view on this bill,” said Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk.
“There are people who say we haven’t gone far enough … and there are people who say we’ve gone too far.”
Wowchuk said the producers affected by the moratorium can continue to operate their barns, and she has heard from people “pleased that we didn’t ban production in those areas.”
She is not concerned that the strong opposition to Bill 17 has harmed her relationship with farmers.
“Absolutely not. I’ve had an open door policy with producers. I’ve worked very closely with them and continue to work with them,” she said. “This is an issue that some will be speaking up on …. Yes, there is a fairly large contingent and I’m pleased that they’re coming out.”
Asked if amendments to Bill 17 are possible, Wowchuk said that’s a matter for conservation minister Stan Struthers to deal with.
“I will be there (at legislative committee) to listen to producers and I’ll be there to continue to work with them,” she said.
