New Manitoba ag minister knows about regulations

Thursday, December 3, 2009

In early November, Keystone Agricultural Producers vice-president Robert McLean welcomed Stan Struthers to his new job as Manitoba's minister of agriculture and hoped that he could find some money to help producers offset the cost of increased regulations.

Struthers knows about regulations. As conservation minister, he shackled hog expansion in the province. Pig production took the blame for environmental problems in Lake Winnipeg caused by phosphorus. The moratorium on building began in the fall of 2006.

Karl Kynoch, then chair of the Manitoba Pork Council, labelled the decision as both unfair and unwarranted, charging that only about one per cent of the phosphorus entering Lake Winnipeg was attributable to hog production, with the rest coming from various industries, human sewage, the United States and other sources.

The ban was partially lifted in March of 2008 in areas where a commission deemed that pork production was not intense or not near environmentally sensitive areas.

Struthers replaces Rosann Wowchuk, who moved over to finance after more than a decade as agriculture minister, replacing Greg Selinger who became premier after Gary Doer resigned. BF