Citizens for the Environment and Future in Eastern Ontario

 

Last minute update on the situation in East Hawkesbury – October 31, 2003

At an “All Candidates” debate for the Municipal elections in East Hawkesbury, the audience cheered the unanimous declarations of all candidates opposing the invasion of Ste. Eugene and Ste. Anne de Prescott with mega hog factories.

A new development has taken place to back up this position.  The Québec Minister of Environment, Thomas Mulcair,  just announced on October 30^th, 2003, the extension of the Québec moratorium against any new mega hog factory, until the establishment (probably by the end of 2004) of new regulations to protect both the environment and the quality of rural life, as recommended by the Boucher Commission of the Bureau d’audiences  publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) in its very recent report on industrial hog production in Québec, which very seriously urges safety.  This was the right decision for Québec, because the existing regulations have not been updated to the rapid expansion and badly controlled  pork industry integration and one is aware of the crises it has caused in several regions.

But will this situation in Québec push their integrators to try even harder to break into Eastern Ontario? They have already been looking for over a year now for land for industrial hog factories in Eastern Ontario, notably in Ste. Eugene, Ste. Anne de Prescott and North Glengarry.

Ontario does not actually have any emergency provincial controls nor a provincial moratorium as adopted in Québec. 

We are asking the Provincial government of Ontario to protect its citizens, by adopting the same moratorium as Québec, while time is taken to improve the controls for the protection of health, the environment and the future of family farms.