Mulcair's Environmental Record #2: Minister of Hog Development

Recently Morris W. Dorosh had a piece published in the Financial post:  Tom Mulcair’s incoherent farm policy.

In it he questions Mulcair's logic and math, when discussing agriculture and supply management.

Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent of farm-gate cash revenue in 2014 and 17.0 per cent the prior year, so Mulcair must have been referring only to Quebec. In that case gross revenue from milk, egg and poultry sales in Quebec was 2.55 per cent of Canadian farm cash income. Employment allegedly created by the system can be almost any number depending on how creatively it is defined.

Conflicting views and just making stuff up when he can't answer a question, is actually a trademark of Mulcair's, and was long before he hijacked the NDP.

Environmentalist and water expert, Mario Desrosiers, said in 2005, after yet another deceit of Mulcair's when he tried to deny that he had fired the Environmental watchdog:

How can we give credibility to the words of a minister when his statements are different from one newspaper to another or from a television program to another or simply false.(1)  

Mulcair dismissed that and the hundreds of other concerns, by claiming that they "stem from emotional reactions" 

Since the media is content to go along with his view of his record as environment minister in Quebec, I'm running a series of articles, that reveal what actually occurred.  There was no principle, no commitment and certainly no logic.

Instead, what we see is a systematic attempt to privatize and deregulate, and just like Stephen Harper, much was done under the cloak of secrecy.  He, along with other members of the Quebec Liberal government, were actually sued, and part of the Plaintiffs' case dealt with the difficulty to access information.  (2)

The defence presented, was that they might expose things that shouldn't be exposed.  Not unlike the Harper government calling everything a "cabinet secret".  In one incident, Mulcair held off a group seeking an audience for a full year.

Mulcair's  Pig in a Poke

When in the Quebec government, Thomas Mulcair would often mention the fact that he helped to draft the terms of NAFTA.  In his promotion of bulk water sales, he suggested that  "the environmental laws protecting water are considered barriers to trade." (3)

Also a barrier to trade was a moratorium on hog farming, imposed by the Parti Quebecois, to keep the mega barn, multinational corporations, from over farming and contaminating the water supply.

When the pubic first became aware of Mulcair's intent to lift the moratorium, there was a great deal of opposition.  In 2003, he promised that a full environmental assessment would be done.  It was, concluding that the ban should not be repealed.  Mulcair lifted it anyway, favouring corporate interests over public safety.

"By authorizing new hog barns, the government is giving municipal officials and citizens a fait accompli. It is preparing for the worst crises than previous ones, since people feel cheated. The BAPE gave them hope and yet nothing changes, "says Gilles Tardif of the Citizen Coalition. 
"The Environment Minister Thomas Mulcair, seems to have turned into the minister of pig development," adds Tim Yeatman ... citizens have just elected candidates who campaigned against hog farms projects.  

 The groups are outraged that the government ignored the recommendations of the BAPE in regard to the protection of the environment and risks to the health of people drinking from artesian wells. "Despite clear evidence to the effect that the spreading of pig manure, slurry is not adequately controlled to prevent the pollution of watercourses, the Liberal government seems to be unconscious," says Martine Ouellet Vice President of the Coalition Eau Secours.  (4)

According to J. Knutson in Cultural Vision: A Memeplex for the Cultural Evolution

The major issue in Quebec is the ever-expanding hog industry, and its impact upon the environment and rural communities. In the fall of 2003 The Quebec government released its report on a public consultation process which recommended fundamental changes to hog production in order to make it sustainable in Quebec. A moratorium on hog production expansion followed, installed until new regulations and policies could be implemented, but was lifted prematurely in December 2004. Since then, grassroots community groups have been calling on the province to heed the Canadian Medical Association’s resolution to ban the expansion of the hog industry until the inherent risks of industrial hog farming are understood and the appropriate solutions. 

So while Thomas Mulcair is travelling the country, attacking Stephen Harper for not protecting our waterways, he himself clearly has no concern.  He will do just what Harper does.  Deregulate his way to more corporate profits.

In fact, one man actually had to go on a public hunger strike, lasting 18 days, just to get Mulcair to address a water pollution concern in his community.(5)

To honour NAFTA, he dishonoured the people he was supposed to protect, by not ensuring that they would enjoy a safe environment and clean drinking water.

The NDP are calling for change, but with Mulcair as prime minister, I'm afraid it would just be more of the same.

Sources:

1. Mulcair is Irresponsible and Insults People, By Mario Desrosiers , Chairman of the Citizens Committee Presquîle - Lanaudière (CCPL), October 11, 2005

2. CANADA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, DISTRICT MONTREAL, Citizens Committee of the peninsula-Lanaudière c. Quebec (Attorney General), 2006 QCCS 4861, SUPERIOR COURT; No: 500-17-023251-047, August 24, 2006

3. Mulcair is Pleased to Have a New Debate, The Press, Charles Cote and Mario Clouthier, June 16, 2004

4. End of moratorium on hog production, The Liberal government threatens the social climate in rural Quebec, Creek, December 12, 2005

5. Philipsburg cottager ends 18-day hunger strike Encouraged by minister's response to algae problem - by Debbie Parkes, The Gazette, August 14, 2003