The Dominion - Sheldon Birnie

Funding Evaporates for Freshwater Science Research

Miles — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:06:44 +0000

Proposed closure of experimental lakes threatens important, ongoing research

WINNIPEG—Freshwater science researchers in Canada could soon find themselves without a world renowned, one-of-a-kind facility in Northwestern Ontario to conduct their studies. If the federal government goes through with plans to cut the $2 million in annual funding to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), the research station will close its doors on April 1, 2013, leaving many graduate students stranded mid-project.

The decision has been lambasted in the media by scientists, who see the move to cut $2 million in annual expenditures as shortsighted, to say the least. Researcher David Schindler of the University of Alberta, a freshwater science expert who has done extensive work researching the effects of tar sands developments downstream on the Athabasca River system, considers the funding cut to be symptomatic of a larger issue. “The real problem is we have a bunch of people running science in this country who don’t even know what science is,” he told reporters at a June 15 press conference.

Researchers at Trent University are currently in the early stages of a project that monitors the effects of nanosilver on a whole lake system level. One of the fastest growing substances in the marketplace today, nanosilver is a minute particle that is added to hundreds of consumer products including clothing, bandages and bug spray. As these products enter the environment, the products breakdown and particles are released into freshwater systems. Early lab studies discovered negative impacts on marine life.

Just last year, the project, which is under the direction of Chris Metcalfe at the Institute for Freshwater Science at Trent, received a $750,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to conclude the three-year study. Metcalfe told the Winnipeg Free Press that with the NSERC grant, he and his team of graduate students would have been able to test the whole ecosystem effects of these particles at the ELA—tests that cannot be conducted in a laboratory setting. The results of the research are now in jeopardy.

At the University of Manitoba, a study on the behavioural and physiological differences between escaped farmed and wild rainbow trout had just been completed when news of the impending closure came out in the federal budget.

“I was probably one of the few lucky ones that had actually completed the field component of my research at the time of the closure announcement,” Master’s student Matthew Martens recently told the Gradzette, the University of Manitoba’s graduate student newspaper. “A number of Master’s, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows were in the process of designing and implementing experiments at the ELA. Since fieldwork is an huge component to ecology and life sciences in general, closing the ELA in the midst of active student research, leaves students with little options to salvage invested time and data that went into their research.”

Jason Venkiteswaran is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Waterloo, where he also did his graduate work studying the effects of flooding due to hydroelectric development. His current research is on eutrophication, a hydrologic process where high nutrient levels, often from agricultural runoff, lead to excessive plant growth, causing detrimental effects on the natural ecosystem.

“This work is on Lake 227,” he told The Dominion in an interview. “It’s the longest running experiment at the ELA. It’s been eutrophied since 1969 or 1970. [The research] would end. So the lake with the greatest amount of eutrophication data, probably the most studied lake in the world with regard to eutrophication, would simply stop being the place where everybody would want to come to study eutrophication.”

Venkitsewaran is concerned that losing the ELA as a place to conduct research will have a detrimental effect not only on Canadian universities attracting top students, researchers and faculty, but also on freshwater science in Canada itself.

“The results from the ELA are useful across the country,” says Venkitsewaran. “It is a kind of national program that every place in the country has a stake in—the acid-sensitive lakes in Nova Scotia, acid-sensitive lakes across Northern Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s the same with lakes in the northern Prairies, in the boreal forest. All these places face similar issues like eutrophication, mercury deposition, acid deposition. A place like ELA can handle research that covers all those places.”

Without the current funding from the federal government, that research will become increasingly difficult to conduct, if not cease altogether.

Frank Stanek, a spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, told The Dominion in an email that other facilities are better aligned with the research mandate of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).

“We understand that science is the backbone of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and we recognize that important work has been done at the facility, but we are now focussing on work being conducted at other freshwater research facilities across the country, which will more than adequately meet the research needs of DFO,” wrote Stanek.

According to the DFO, the “work being conducted at the ELA is not directly aligned with the Department's core mandate of research that supports decision-making on habitat and fisheries management.” Stanek suggested that other sectors, such as universities or private interests, are better suited to run the facility, “as they are better positioned to undertake the type of studies requiring a whole-ecosystem manipulation.”

However, Venkitsewaran does not believe that universities will be able to fund the facility, citing the manner in which universities fund studies.

“The way that university granting systems [work] is you’re only looking at three or four years at a time,” says Venkitsewaran. “You can’t run a long term facility that way. It means every two or three years you go into panic mode trying to find money to keep going.”

With no clear alternative to the current federally funded model in place, it is possible that graduate students and researchers currently working out of the ELA across the country will find themselves high and dry come April 2013. However, it is Canadians, as beneficiaries of that research, who will truly be the ones who are losing out.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor, and song & dance man living in Winnipeg, MB.

Experimental lakes

Harper's Assault on the Past

Tim McSorley — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:20:36 +0000

Cuts to Library and Archives Canada fighting words for archival community

WINNIPEG, MB—While federal departments across the board are reeling from cutbacks in the recent budget, a fiery call to arms is ringing from unlikely sources. Librarians, archivists, historians, and antiquarian booksellers across the country— not generally known for raising a ruckus— are sounding a battle cry against the Conservatives' “war on culture, history, and ultimately, Canada.”

“Our history is in danger, and our culture,” says John Lutz, historian at the University of Victoria and council member of the Canadian Historical Association.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is expected to cut approximately 10 per cent of its budget and almost 20 per cent of its staff. This alone is frustrating to the archival community. Already, services at LAC have suffered as belts have tightened. However, it is the elimination of the National Archives Development Program (NADP) that was the final straw for the generally reserved caretakers of Canada’s historical and cultural documents and artifacts.

“It all comes down to archives in Canada being able to help Canadians find their history,” says Lara Wilson, archivist at the University of Victoria and Chair of the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA). The CCA, who have administered the NADP for its duration, recently wrote an open letter to Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages James Moore protesting the cutbacks.

“By cutting these relatively small funds to local archives they are in danger of becoming no longer accessible,” Lutz believes. “Local archives have been using these funds to make their materials secure, to protect them from degradation, and making them available online.”

With a modest budget of $1.7 million, the National Archives Development Program has supported small, local archives across the country to preserve local history for 26 years. The program’s overall cost to taxpayers is a drop in the bucket compared to the $28 million budgeted for celebrating the War of 1812. This doesn't sit well with Lutz.

“A certain kind of history that is pompous [and] jingoistic is getting all these resources,” says Lutz.

While cultural institutions like the Canada Council and national museums and galleries were spared cutbacks in this year’s budget, these institutions will still be affected by the cutbacks at LAC.

“I think what Canadians might not appreciate is that other cultural institutions like galleries and museums use archives to create their exhibits, do their research and so forth,” explains Wilson. “A blow to archives is a blow to museums.”

Even before these cuts were announced, antiquarian booksellers across Canada—who often act as “on the ground” scouts in the acquisition of cultural and historical texts—were feeling the freeze.

“Archives budgets have been cut back so badly it’s hard for them to acquire new material,” says Lutz, “which is impacting the antiquarian book market.”

Burton Lysecki of Burton Lysecki Books in Winnipeg, which specializes in western Canadian and local Manitoban history, has seen these impacts first hand.“We are the fetchers in the process of providing the books that need to be preserved for our national heritage,” he explained to The Dominion. “We’ve been let down on that subject.”

However, “Library and Archives Canada has the money to fulfill its mandate,” a spokesperson for Minister Moore told The Dominion via email. According to Minister Moore’s office, “LAC continues to modernize its operations to digitize its content and make it available to more people.”

While antiquarian book dealing is only a part of Burton Lysecki Books’ business, it is a part of the business that Lysecki and part-owner Karen Sigurdson take very seriously.

“Customers come and go,” explains Sigurdson. “What’s bothersome about losing this customer is the kinds of things we were selling to them. Those are important things that belong in our country.”

If the historical texts are not purchased, there is a strong chance that they will be lost, sold at garage sales or thrown out.

“The point is it’s important that these things be captured and preserved in the national archives,” says Lysecki.

“Countries really only hold together if they have a national story that is available to all of us,” Lutz believes. When the infrastructure and funding to enhance, preserve, and display our national story is eroded, ignored or dismantled piecemeal, Lutz believes it bodes ill for future generations.

“This is, it seems to me, a part of a larger assault on the past,” argues Lutz. “It is part of a series of cutbacks that are going to affect historians and archivists adversely.”

Combined with deep cuts to the information economy and to cultural institutions such as Parks Canada, Lutz agrees that what we are seeing could very well be described an aggressive restructuring of culture, history, and Canada.

“History is under attack from many directions,” he says. Whether anyone will be able to read about this battle in the archives of the future, however, has yet to be determined.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor and song & dance man living in Winnipeg.

Burton Lysecki

Peace Region Boom

Miles — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:22:50 +0000

Growth in northern town leaves residents feeling the pinch

WINNIPEG—Home to 12,000 permanent residents, Dawson Creek, BC, is surrounded by productive agricultural land and is known as the place where the Alaska Highway begins. Located 600 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, Dawson Creek has seen many cycles of “boom and bust” since the Second World War. During the war, this town was home to a US Army base that built a highway from Dawson Creek to Delta Junction, Alaska—a distance of 2,700 kilometres through the bush—over the span of only eight months.

But this small town, located in the South Peace region of northern BC, has become a stage for controversy, as natural gas development continues to pump millions of dollars into the local economy, despite concerns that some people feel left behind. Currently, the community is experiencing likely the largest “boom” period in the town’s history.

“The development in our area has helped add stability to our economy,” says Mayor Mike Bernier in an email. Bernier has professional history in the natural gas industry, having moved to Dawson Creek in 1993 to work for Pacific Northern Gas. He has been mayor of Dawson Creek since 2008.

“We have seen many companies choose to move to Dawson Creek to capitalize on the opportunities," he says. "Our developers are building as fast as they can to keep up with the demand.”

But in the town, which has been recognized provincially for its progressive municipal planning, opinions remain divided regarding the pace of development, especially when the economic driver is the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” to get at shale gas reserves.

The area was put on high alert in 2008 and 2009 when several EnCana gas wells were bombed in protest. While RCMP conducted a massive investigation, including an intensive search of convicted oil and gas “saboteur” Wiebo Ludwig’s nearby property, so far no charges have been laid in the case. A $1 million reward has been offered.

Ludwig has been an outspoken critic of oil and gas development in the area since the 1990s, when his family, and his livestock, began to experience negative health impacts. Ludwig claimed these impacts—which included rashes, headaches, nausea and still-births—were a result of living in close proximity to a natural gas flare. He was convicted in 2000 of five charges related to industrial sabotage of oil and gas wells in the area surrounding Hythe, Alberta, a 30 minute drive from Dawson Creek. Ludwig served two-thirds of his 28-month sentence before being released in 2001. In 2011, Ludwig was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus.

“For people living in outlying areas with gas batteries in their backyards and stuff, they don’t like it one bit,” says Andrew Triebel, a local tattoo artist. “But at the same time, these [companies] are paying for our public programs. We just have to face the fact that this world is reliant on fossil fuel and this part of the country is rich in it, but there’s got to be a happy medium between corporate profits and ruining our resources forever.”

Marilyn Belak, a former city councilor from 2002 to 2011, and resident of Dawson Creek since the 1970s, says the city’s “greatest challenge is the ‘hurry-hurry’ traditional character of the oil and gas industry.” During Belak’s time on council, Dawson Creek was recognized as a provincial leader in developing and implementing municipal sustainability policy.

“The general industry ethos is to hurry in,” says Belak. “Everything is hurry up and drill and stockpile and pipe. The Oil and Gas Commission services the industry needs above all and the environment and public interests are not addressed in any meaningful and coordinated way.”

Despite opposition from some residents, natural gas development shows no signs of cooling anytime soon. Recently, PetroChina made a billion-dollar investment in Royal Dutch Shell’s massive Groundbirch shale gas project just north of Dawson Creek, making PetroChina a 20 per cent shareholder in the project. And in a recently released report, BC’s Ministry of Energy and Mines detailed how natural gas production—the bulk of which is produced in northeastern BC—could almost triple over the next decade, going from 1.1 trillion cubic feet annually to three trillion cubic feet by 2020.

“With demand growing quickly, prices in Asia are up to four times [what] they are in North America,” wrote Rich Coleman, Minister of Energy and Mines and Minister Responsible for Housing, in the introduction to the report. “BC is ideally positioned to compete for a share of that lucrative market.”

Even though the demand is growing, particularly from Asian countries, full exploitation of the resource is still dependent on variables that are not yet in place. Three major liquid natural gas (LNG) plants in Kitimat, BC, are in the proposal stage. These plants would prepare natural gas from northeastern BC for transport via tanker to markets in Asia. These LNG plants, and any pipeline network needed to transport gas from the Peace Region to the northwest coast, have yet to pass environmental review.

Committing long-term to Asian markets is dangerous for Canada’s long-term energy security, argues veteran geoscientist David Hughes.

“Canada has had no energy strategy since the demise of the National Energy Program (NEP) in the mid-1980s other than ‘let the markets rule,’” Hughes wrote in a recent paper on the subject. “As a result, short-term corporate needs for profit and growth rule the day, often at the expense of the longer-term energy and environmental needs of Canadians.”

Blair Lekstrom, MLA for the South Peace region and former mayor of Dawson Creek from 1996 to 2001, believes that the pace of development in the Peace region is sustainable over the long term. While Lekstrom has had his ups and downs with the provincial Liberal party—at one point he resigned his cabinet position over opposition to the provincial HST—he is currently the minister for transportation and infrastructure.

“The natural gas industry is extremely important to the northeast part of British Columbia, as well as the entire province,” he told The Dominion via email. “It is the single largest contributor to the economy of BC and creates thousands of jobs for families of our region.”

But not every worker coming to the region is necessarily bringing a family in tow, and a migrant workforce has created problems of its own.

The influx of hundreds of workers has created a surge in demand for the hospitality industry in Dawson Creek, and has subsequently driven the cost of housing for permanent residents skyward. For a standard, three-bedroom, 1000-square-foot, 30-year-old house, Blaine Nicholson, a real estate agent in Dawson Creek since 1978, estimates prices to be between $200,000 and $250,000, prices comparable to urban centres like Edmonton.

“That’s kind of your starter home,” Nicholson says. “If you wanted to get into something nicer you could get into a brand new home, in a new subdivision, three-bedroom, 1200 square feet, full basement, unfinished...they’re starting at $360,000.”

Despite the negative effect of increased housing prices, Bernier and others continue to argue that these developments are good for the town.

“There have been five new hotels built, new apartment buildings, and lots of residential development,” says Bernier. “The past three years have been the best in our city’s history for private investment.”

Nicholson confirms Bernier’s position.

“It’s never been this busy before,” he told The Dominion. “Most of the hotels in town are operating at 95 per cent occupancy right now, and the only reason they’re not 100 per cent is because of turn-over. Oil patch guys are getting their ‘living out’ allowances, so they’re living out of hotels, paying between $100 a night and $175 a night, and they’re staying in for weeks or months at a time.”

According to a recent article in the Vancouver Province, the increased demands on the hospitality industry has led to a shortage of kitchen and cleaning staff for some hotels and restaurants. The same article says hotels have applied to employ temporary foreign workers through the federal government. If their applications are approved, it would allow them to access temporary labour at lower wages than they would have to pay for local labour. The minimum wage in BC is $9.50 per hour.

With production from gas wells expected to continue increasing over the next ten years, many long-term residents are beginning to feel as though they are lost within their home community.

“It used to be you could go out and anyone you saw, you either knew them or you knew their face, had seen them somewhere before,” reflects Jason Reinitz, a lifelong area resident. “Now it’s just becoming faceless...People appreciate the money it’s bringing in and all. But, and I’ve heard this from a lot of people, it’s not the same place anymore.”

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor and song & dance man living in Winnipeg.

Dawson Creek

Hogtown, Manitoba

stephlaw — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:03:13 +0000

An investigation into one factory's radical impact on labour and the environment in a prairie town

SASKATOON—The meatpacking industry once provided thousands of Canadian workers with a decent living wage. Thanks in part to globalization the industry now employs far fewer people at wages that have essentially been frozen since the mid-1980s. These days, many meatpacking employees are temporary foreign workers who must sign restrictive contracts with their employer for a chance at attaining Canadian citizenship.

Maple Leaf Consumer Foods’ hog processing plant in Brandon, MB, is the largest such plant in Canada. Employing over 2,200 people, it is the primary economic driver for the booming “Wheat City.” By all accounts, Maple Leaf's facility, opened in 1999, is a modern, world-class processing plant. The facility expanded in 2008 increasing its processing capacity to over 85,000 hogs a week, totaling over 4 million annually. Yet despite its impressive size and modernity, the facility has struggled with retaining workers as the work is hard, repetitive and undesirable for many.

In 2003, the annual turnover rate at Maple Leaf was well over 100 per cent. To satisfy its need for labourers and to reduce turnover, the plant began recruiting workers from abroad. Maple Leaf’s Brandon facility now employs over 2,200 hourly, unionized workers, the majority of whom are either temporary foreign workers or new residents who have passed through the foreign worker program.

“When the turnover was really high, my understanding is that it was in the early stages of the plant, and there’s a lot of growing pains that happen with that,” explains Blake Caruthers, Communications Officer with UFCW Local 832, representing the workers at Maple Leaf. “Once they started using the temporary foreign worker program, people were staying and making Brandon their home.”

The annual turnover rate has been reduced to below 100 per cent, due in part to the hiring contracts that temporary foreign workers and many immigrant workers are required to sign. In order to qualify for fast-tracked landed immigrant status, temporary foreign workers must agree to extend their six month contracts for another two years at Maple Leaf.

“You have a more or less captive labour force, based on immigration,” says Joe Dolecki, Professor of environment and economics at Brandon University. “It [is] much the same as the old indentured servitude model.” Many of the jobs at Maple Leaf in Brandon are unskilled positions, with starting wages hovering around a dollar or two above the provincial minimum of $10 per hour, totalling approximately $19,000 a year. According to Caruthers, skilled labourers at the plant can earn as much as $18 to start, not including shift premiums offered to employees.

In addition to the relatively low wages, the work conditions are far from ideal. “The work is not only hard,” says Dolecki, “it’s physically debilitating for people.”

“It was pretty shitty work conditions,” says Geoff Mann, a former line worker at Maple Leaf in Brandon. “I would stand in one spot, literally, for two hours, then get a coffee break, then stand in the same spot again for two hours, and so forth. A pig leg, a loin, would come down the line, and I would turn it,” he explains. “Turn, turn, turn. It was coming lengthwise, so I would turn it the other way, and it would move on to the next person, who had to do a specific cut.” Mann, who is now 32, kept the job for three months in 2002 before finally quitting to attend Brandon University. “Your feet would just freeze,” Mann recalls as the factory is temperature-controlled to prevent meat from spoiling. “It didn’t matter what kind of socks I wore, my feet would freeze, standing in one spot all the time. You couldn’t walk around to warm them up, you could rock or maybe take one step to the side and back.”

Mann remembers shift premiums being used at the plant as incentives to combat absenteeism. If a worker showed up on time every day for an entire month, they would receive an extra dollar per hour worked. Shift premiums still exist but Mann sees the terms for getting this financial bonus as unrealistic for most workers, especially those with young families or those who are single parents. “Say if you missed one day or [were late for] 15 minutes one day because your kid had a doctor’s appointment, then you’re losing out on that one dollar an hour for 80 hours a pay-cheque, for a whole month,” he said.

Martyn Conrad, who worked at the plant between 2002 and 2003 as a wash bay attendant, recalls a lack of employees and workers not showing up on time or at all. “It was my job to clean and return large, bloodied metal bins that once contained various pig parts, back to the production line,” Conrad explained via email. Conrad kept the job, working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday to Friday, for almost a year before finally quitting.

In the early 1980s, managers of many Albertan meatpacking plants aimed to drastically increase profits on the backs of unionized workers. Plant owners followed the lead of their US counterparts, who—through reorganization, hostile takeovers and other extreme tactics—reduced or eliminated many of the gains made by workers since the Second World War. Albertan meatpackers responded with a series of strikes which lec to job cuts, lowered wages and reduced benefits.

In 1986, Peter Pocklington, former owner of Gainers meatpacking and the Edmonton Oilers, told Alberta Report, “The unions are very self-serving.” At a time when union workers were paid around $1800 a month he said, “In Taiwan, workers get $300 a month for the same job. And Taiwan isn’t that far away by air. [Unions] need to find out what the new realities of business are.”

The “new realities” of globalized business are clear to unions in Canada today, as wages and benefits have been scaled back dramatically since the 1980s. The strike-breaking tactics used by Peter Pocklington and the management at Gainers forced the UFCW to accept major concessions at the bargaining table for years to come.

In 1986, hourly wages were between $8 and $12 for meatpackers. Today, at Maple Leaf, hourly wages start at $12 and go to a maximum of $18 for skilled positions. Taking inflation into account, wages are lower now than they were in 1986.

The meatpacking industry itself, like many other industries in Canada, has turned to globalization to fill demand for workers. Since the introduction of the “temporary foreign worker program,” Maple Leaf has successfully recruited workers abroad by offering “fast-tracked” immigrant status to temporary workers who complete their initial contract with the company, and who agree to sign on to a contract extension as landed immigrants.

To accommodate these new workers, UFCW Local 832 has pushed to have the collective bargaining agreement and workplace information available to workers in four languages: English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Ukrainian. “It was the first of its kind in Canada,” Caruthers says of the collective agreement. “You’ve got to give Maple Leaf credit for that, because it was not a hard bargaining issue with them. They understand the value of keeping their employees, our members, informed of their rights, and they realized that the better everybody understands the collective agreement, the better the workforce.”

While the UFCW has been successful — and groundbreaking — in securing rights for its foreign members, temporary foreign workers at other work places in Canada are still without the rights and protections of Maple Leaf employees. Apart from rights to translators, temporary foreign workers only recently secured the right to an expedited arbitration process in cases where they have been terminated, allowing them to remain in Manitoba until the issue is resolved. Agricultural foreign workers in southern Ontario and foreign workers in northern Alberta’s oil patch are often lacking information about worker's rights and without many of the benefits included in the collective bargaining agreement between Maple Leaf and the UFCW.

For the first time in years, Brandon's schools are filling up, houses are being built and new businesses are opening their doors. It is clear that Maple Leaf Commercial Foods’ Brandon plant has positively increased population growth in the community, which has in turn spurred the economy forward at a rate unseen for decades. The vacancy rate in Brandon is now less than 0.5 per cent and the unemployment rate sits at about 2.8 per cent.

Growth comes at a cost that is more difficult to quantify. The success of Intensive Livestock Operations (ILOs) — often disparagingly referred to as “factory farms” — that feed the processing plant in Brandon comes on the backs of small, rural communities already struggling with demographic change and losses of basic services.

Of the 85,000 hogs processed weekly in Brandon, over 60,000 are sourced from hog producers in Manitoba, while the rest come from eastern Saskatchewan. Only Quebec produces more hogs annually than Manitoba. Today, only 10 to 15 per cent of hogs produced in Manitoba are by small-scale “traditional” livestock operators producing less than 1,000 hogs. A transition from small-scale hog production to ILOs began in the 1990s, and has continued to the point where over 50 per cent of hogs in the province come from massive ILOs that house 5,000 or more hogs.

Critics of ILOs charge that such large-scale operations have negative social and environmental impacts on rural communities. Farmers and rural residents in south western Manitoba were concerned about the shift towards ILOs that taking place as early as 1999, presenting arguments before the Citizen’s Hearing on Hog Production and the Environment. Residents had organized the hearing in anticipation of the opening of Brandon’s Maple Leaf plant, the results being presented to the province in early 2000.

“Often you’ll find in rural Manitoba, when ILOs are proposed, a great deal of hype about contributing to the growth of small communities that have experienced population declines,” explains Dolecki, who has written repeatedly on the subject of ILOs. “Almost none of that stuff pans out, almost none of those spin-off benefits pan out.”

Dolecki argues that large-scale operations tend to replace smaller independent operators. This puts further negative pressure on rural communities, which are already struggling to survive. Before the policy landscape shifted to favour ILOs in the 1990s, there were upwards of 4,000 hog producers in the province. Today there are fewer than 800. “Large barns can be run be with only a few people,” says Dolecki, “because they’re so heavily mechanized and computerized. This does not enhance the possibilities of using that as a catalyst for the restoration of rural populations.”

Maple Leaf isn’t the only large-scale hog processing plant in Manitoba. Hytek’s plant in Neepawa processes over 900,000 hogs annually, the bulk of which are Manitoba-raised. In order to process such high numbers of hogs, large meatpacking plants require a constant and reliable supply of animals. By dealing with large-scale producers, hog processors like Maple Leaf are able to guarantee their production goals. However, ILOs, along with other intensive agricultural practices, have been blamed for much of Lake Winnipeg’s current pollution problems, as well as pollution in southern Manitoba and the Interlake region, where intensive hog operations are common.

Since the early 1990s, Lake Winnipeg — Canada’s eighth largest freshwater lake — has faced increasing problems with algal blooms. Algal blooms are fueled by high availability of nitrogen and phosphorus in the aquatic environment. These substances can be introduced into the waters through the addition of sewage and fertilizers in a process known as eutrophication. At the height of summer, many beaches at the south end of the lake are closed due to health concerns related to the algal blooms. Further to the north, fisheries are negatively impacted when eutrophication runs rampant, as it has been in Lake Winnipeg for the past twenty years.

Degradation of the environment as a result of industrial agricultural practices is difficult, if not impossible, to put a price tag on. While the full cost of remediation at this point is unknown, it will undoubtedly be borne by tax payers for years to come.

Currently, the Manitoba government offers up to $26 million annually directly to hog farmers to improve manure management, and to reduce the risk of contaminating water with excess phosphorus and other pollutants, explained Manitoba Agriculture, Food, and Rural Initiatives in an email. This is provided through the Manure Management Financial Assistance Program.

“I did an estimate for the Clean Environment Commission on the environmental subsidy that was involved in hog production as of 2005,” recalls Dolecki, who totaled the estimated cost of clean-up and site reclamation required to deal with the pollution caused by ILOs in Manitoba. “In 2004, I estimated it to be between $125 and $140 million dollars a year, while the net income for the hog production side was about $100 million a year. So, if you made the hog industry pay the full cost of clean up and waste disposal, the industry would have imploded.”

Although The Dominion contacted the senior Human Resources manager at Maple Leaf’s Brandon plant to comment, Maple Leaf refused to participate in an interview.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor, and song & dance man living in Winnipeg, MB.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Maple Leaf Flag

Freezing Feet

Bye, Bye, Wheat Board?

Tim McSorley — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:27:59 +0000

Small farmers raise concern as Conservatives prepare to cut board's monopoly

WINNIPEG—Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is preparing to pass legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly on exports and milling of prairie-grown wheat and barley.

“The Wheat Board was brought into place, basically, so that grain buyers wouldn’t take advantage of farmers,” explained Jo-Lene Gardiner of Manitoba Agriculture, Food, and Rural Initiatives, which is based out of Pilot Mound, MB.

From it's offices in Winnipeg, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) markets Canadian grain to world markets and for domestic consumption.

Opinions among grain farmers are divided on the issue. As it stands, grain farmers in western Canada can only sell wheat and barley to the CWB. The Wheat Board therefore decides which varieties of wheat and barley farmers can grow, buys grain from farmers and markets it to buyers domestically and around the world.

One benefit to farmers under the current system is that payment of grain is meted out over a year period, and the CWB attempts to provide farmers with the best price possible for their grain by paying them the average price of grain on the world market over the year.

“If when you sell your wheat, [the] price is five dollars a bushel, and by the time the end of the year came along the price was nine dollars a bushel, under the new system you’re stuck with five dollars, end of story,” said Jan McIntyre, a mixed cattle and grain farmer near Cartwright, MB. “Under the Wheat Board, you would get the average price, which would be the difference between your five dollars and whatever the final average was.”

Currently, the CWB provides all grain farmers with the same price for their grain, "no matter if you have 100 bushels or 100,000,” said Gardiner. “If you have No. 1 wheat at 14 per cent protein, you would get the same price [per bushel] as the next guy. Everybody is treated equally under the system.”

“[The Wheat Board] takes a certain percentage [of wheat] right off the combine right to their elevator,” Derek Marvin told The Dominion. Marvin is a 31-year-old elementary school teacher in Winnipeg, but during the summer months leading up to harvest, he returns to his family’s farm in the rural municipality of Elton, MB, to help his father run their 2,300-acre operation.

“Without it, farmers are going to have to bring it back home in their own storage bins on the farm, and so you’re going to have to buy new bins and find more storage and find more space for it all," he said. "A grain bin holds 40,000 bushels, and that’ll cost you $100,000. That’s like buying a house!”

Opponents of the CWB’s monopoly argue that farmers ought to have the right to market their own grain, and decide which varieties to grow and when.

“An open market will increase the number of buyers bidding on our wheat and barley,” federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said told reporters in October, according to the Globe & Mail. “Unlike what some people may claim, the sky will not fall in an open market. Instead, the sky will be the limit.”

“I think it’s going to be a positive change,” said Barry Critcher, who has been farming grain for 28 years. Critcher farms 3,200 acres between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, BC, one of British Columbia’s most productive grain growing regions. “I think it’s going to be positive to my farm, because I can sell my grain to who I want, when I want, and I can do the things I want to do on my farm without having to worry about letting somebody else do the marketing for me."

The prairie provinces have been experiencing a rural demographic shift since at least the 1970s, which kicked into high gear since the 1980s. Rural populations are diminishing, small towns are dying, and economic control over food systems is held by an increasingly smaller number of players, with money flowing out of small communities and into corporate headquarters, such as those of agribusiness giants Vittera and Cargill, in urban centers.

How will the changes to the CWB affect this demographic and economic transition?

“I think it will perpetuate the problem,” said Marvin, whose family has been farming grain in Elton, MB area for three generations. “It’s already to the point where rarely can a small family farm exist on its own. It needs other income. When I think of all the farms around my community, all the farmers who were farming smaller acreages than us have dropped off. They’ve sold a few acres to us, a few to the Hutterites, a few to some other neighbors, because it’s just too tough to keep up.”

While it is impossible at this juncture to confidently predict what effects the changes to the Canadian Wheat Board will have on farmers and rural communities, there is no doubt that grain farmers and farming communities in western Canada will have to adapt to the new economic reality—and fast.

Most expect that the proposed legislation will go through; if it does, as of August 1, 2012, the Canadian Wheat Board as we know it today will be gone.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor, and musician living in Winnipeg.

Golden Wheat