The Council of Canadians Fredericton and Kent County chapters were at the New Brunswick Legislature today to deliver a petition with 13,000 signatures opposed to the herbicide glyphosate.
They did so under the umbrella of Stop Spraying in New Brunswick.
Global News reports, “A protest group submitted a petition to two New Brunswick MLAs calling for the province to stop the use of the herbicide glyphosate. The chemical is used to kill unwanted weeds. It was developed by Monsanto and brought to market in 1974 under the trade name Roundup. …In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the herbicide as ‘probably carcinogenic in humans’. Several jurisdictions have stopped using glyphosate.”
The news report adds, “Natural Resources Minister Denis Landry says the government is already enforcing strict rules on spraying and until they hear otherwise they will continue to permit it in the province. …The Department of Health says an independent study should be completed sometime this spring. Green Party Leader David Coon doesn’t agree with the government’s refusal to do anything in the interim.” Coon says, “In a normal situation there’s something called the precautionary approach which would say if there’s even doubt we should hit pause and take a break from this until we better understand it. But they haven’t even done that.”
The Canadian Press adds, “The group organizing the event in front of the legislature in Fredericton wants the province to stop spraying forests and NB Power right of ways in New Brunswick. It says increased clearcutting and glyphosate spraying of softwood plantations are eliminating deer food and affecting the deer population. The group says the deer population is one-quarter what it was 30 years ago. They say spraying has also affected the butterfly population with the removal of milkweed.”
CBC has reported, “Glyphosate is a herbicide used widely in the province as a defoliant by a number of companies, including NB Power and J.D. Irving Ltd.”
And Radio-Canada International has explained, “The provincial government in New Brunswick has been spraying herbicides on 15,000 hectares of crown land since the 1970’s when it first permitted pulp and paper companies to clearcut natural forest and replace it with plantations. The taxpayer funded programme is to benefit the lumber industry by protecting fast growing softwood trees from encroaching hardwood saplings. The hardwood saplings however are an important food supply for deer and moose, and there have been suggestions that the programme has removed thousands of tons of such food and has contributed to the steep decline in moose and deer numbers in the province in the past ten years.”
As we have previously noted in blogs, the Fredericton and Kent County chapters have regularly been at farmers markets and other public locations to collect signatures for this petition.
