Citizens for the Environment and Future in Eastern Ontario

 

CEFEO congratulates the East Hawkesbury Municipal Council for their sound reasoning

The February 23^rd edition of the weekly newspaper Le Carillon reported that East Hawkesbury has prohibited intensive hog operations by adopting a new municipal by-law on February 14^th.

By-law 2025-23 prohibits the creation or establishment of, the possession, maintenance or operation, directly or indirectly of an intensive hog operation in the county of East Hawkesbury.  The term “Intensive Hog Operation” is defined as follows:  An agricultural installation which implies the reproduction, breeding, custody, lodging care or maintenance of pigs exceeding 500 living animals.

The citizens for the environment and future in Eastern Ontario (CEFEO) congratulate and thank the Municipal Council of East Hawkesbury for this decision.

Evidently, council has listened to the vast majority of its citizens, including local farmers: it has fully analyzed all of the documentation given to it (notably by CEFEO) and has consulted a highly qualified lawyer concerning this matter.

The preamble to the regulation emphasizes the important points supporting Council’s position.

• Municipalities have been created (by the Province of Ontario) to be responsible and accountable governments with respect to matters within their jurisdiction. They have the capacity, rights and jurisdiction to regulate locally for purposes related to health, safety and well-being of the inhabitants, including sewage waste, animals, odor, public nuisance and matters that could become or cause nuisances.

• The report entitled Nutrients and their impact on the Canadian environment (published by the Federal Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Fisheries, Health and Natural Resources) has concluded that in areas where intensive hog operations are practiced, there are more nutrients available then required by the crops, resulting in major environmental and health concerns about air quality, eutrophication of surface waters and the contamination of ground water.

• The declaration of the Québec government of an urgent preoccupation…due to a large increase of intensive hog operations in recent years and of the environmental impact of these operations.

• The resolutions of the Canadian Medical Association calling for a moratorium on Intensive Hog Operations, pending a more complete understanding of their impact on human health.

• The evidence and resultant documentation given to the East Hawkesbury Council by many of its concerned citizens.

• The importance the East Hawkesbury and its citizens place on health, safety and the well being of its citizens as well as the protection of the environment.

• The fact that the largest risk identified, for the environment as well as human health and safety, is generated by intensive hog operations – and, consequently,  that these agricultural exploitations require a higher degree of caution.

• Before the considerable risk of serious or irreversible damage to the environment and to the citizens of the community, the stakes of health and public safety, as well as sustainable development can only be assured, in this context, by proactive measures which conform with the precautionary principle.

• The council has established that in order to react suitably, in an appropriate manner, toward local stakes, in order to protect their assets and favour the well-being and future of the municipality, with respect to the economic, social and environmental plan, that it is in the public interest, both desirable and necessary, that the municipality adopt measures for its inhabitants and its environment concerning intensive hog operations.

The community of East Hawkesbury is therefore protected against integrators who wish to establish intensive hog operations on their territory.

CEFEO must, however, indicate that elected officials in communities adjacent to East Hawkesbury, have not yet understood the menace represented by the invasion of intensive hog operations, on the future of their communities.  If other intensive hog operations were established there, the residents of East Hawkesbury could well suffer due to diverse geographical situations, the water table, streams and rivers, wind, and truck routes, among others, not bound by municipal borders and thus able to spread their perverse effects from one county to another.

The neighbouring counties (according to CEFEO) susceptible to an invasion of intensive hog operations are:

• North Glengarry, where certain uninformed elected officials believe that intensive hog operations can be included in a sustainable development plan; and

• The nearby Québec municipalities, in particular Rigaud and others of the MRC of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, where the integrators would be able to establish their operations since the lifting of the Québec moratorium, by the Liberal government at the end of 2004, without alternate replacement legislation.

CEFEO wishes to thank the citizens who have given donations for the advancement of the work in defending the rights and interests of the community.  CEFEO will continue to be vigilant in this area.