It was designed to be a glitzy, glamorous, exciting launch of a project that was good for everyone.
A proposed OlyWest hog slaughter plant would bring more than 1,000 new jobs to Winnipeg and make rural Manitoba the national centre of the booming and lucrative hog industry.
No longer would the Prairies export a large proportion of its hogs to the United States.
Instead, the value-added benefits of jobs and money would occur in Manitoba, in the heart of hog production territory.
However, the OlyWest proposal immediately degenerated into controversy, with a Winnipeg city councillor denouncing the project as soon as it was announced.
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Since then, the local media and commentators have generally portrayed the project as controversial and described it in negative terms. Winnipeg’s city council has been wracked by nasty and personal disagreements over whether to support the project, and the provincial government has been accused of an economic debacle as serious as the 1980s failure to win the CF-18 military jet maintenance contract.
It was a bad beginning for a project that is in deep trouble and may never proceed.
The man who kicked up the controversy at that first announcement, councillor Russ Wyatt, said the project’s investors, the city government and the provincial government couldn’t have chosen a worse way to introduce it.
“All of a sudden you’re confronted with a fait accompli and you’re not too pleased,” said Wyatt, who represents the Transcona neighbourhood that lies three kilometres from the proposed OlyWest site.
Wyatt had heard rumours about something happening for weeks, but had received no details. When he learned that a large slaughter plant might be located near his ward, he couldn’t get information from city and provincial officials. By the time the project was made public, he was suspicious, annoyed and ready to see the worst.
“What about the odours? Why are you putting this in a high density area,” demanded Wyatt, interrupting agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk at the announcement.
From then onward, Wyatt campaigned against the plant, even though the nearest home in his ward was 1½ km from it and the proponents assured the city and province that odours would be minimal and unlikely to ever cause a problem.
A number of nearby business owners attacked the project and residents of Transcona generally accepted the idea that the slaughter plant would stink and demolish the value of their homes.
Despite assurances from the plant proponents and the Manitoba Pork Council, the perception stuck with Winnipeggers that the project would be a disaster for the city. That view grew as opponents brought in enemies of the modern hog industry, who told tales of environmental devastation in North Carolina.
Wyatt said it may be common for governments to present big new projects in a “done deal” manner, but when it involves the hog industry, it’s an approach likely to fail.
“A lot of headache and heartache could have been avoided,” said Wyatt. “Sometimes the government (introduces major projects with much fanfare), but when it comes to economic development … it’s useful to engage the community at large with where you want to go and what the vision is and what you’re trying to achieve.”
According to hog industry sources, the industry’s leaders don’t think that it was wrong to introduce OlyWest’s proposal as if it was a done-deal. They said enemies of the industry would have attacked the project no matter how it was introduced, and the smell and environmental concerns are just a smokescreen hiding the true motives of opponents who dislike intensive livestock operations.
“I don’t think we would have changed anything,” said Karl Kynoch, about whether he had any second thoughts about how the project was introduced.
“You’re always going to have some controversy and sure, I guess in hindsight, sure there’s things you could do different … I don’t want to comment on that,” said Kynoch, chair of the Manitoba Pork council.
Wyatt agreed the OlyWest proposal might have been controversial regardless of its site and how it was introduced to Winnipeggers.
“I don’t know if there had been more consultation that it would have made a difference,” he said. The hog industry is controversial already, so anything involving it might have exploded regardless.”
Wyatt added, “in the 1980s we talked about the failure of executive federalism (when political elites attempted constitutional change with the Meech Lake and Charlottetown agreements), but this is almost an example of executive provincialism, where you have these negotiations going on behind closed doors, not involving the general community, not based on sound principles.”
OlyWest timeline
October 2005: At a gala announcement at the Winnipeg Convention Centre, hundreds of local business and community leaders hear the announcement of a $210 million hog slaughter plant for Winnipeg to be built by Hytek Ltd., Big Sky Farms, and Olymel.
- November 2005: A divided Winnipeg city council officially approves the incentive package for the OlyWest plant. Some residents of nearby neighbourhoods unite to fight the project.
- April 2006: A group of businesses in the St. Boniface Industrial Park form to fight the project.
- May 2006: A Winnipeg city council debate over whether to rescind the incentive package inspires media stunts by both opponents of the plant, who hold a demonstration outside city hall, and proponents, who fill the council chambers’ viewing gallery wearing OlyWest butcher’s aprons.
- May/August 2006: OlyWest holds two “open houses,” where promoters detail the project.
- August 2006: OlyWest applies for a licence from the Clean Environment Commission.
- October 2006: OlyWest is a major issue in eastside Winnipeg municipal election battles, with project opponent Russ Wyatt winning in a landslide and proponent Franco Magnifico losing.
- November 2006: The Manitoba government imposes a moratorium on future hog barn development once projects already in the process of approval are completed. No deadline is placed on this “pause” in development.
- December 2006: Olymel and Big Sky Farms back out of the OlyWest project, but Hytek vows to go forward.
- December 2006: Both the Winnipeg and Manitoba governments say their incentive packages will have to be reviewed and Hytek will have to reapply for the incentives.
