Farmscape for August 27, 2010   (Episode 3401)

The Manitoba Conservative Party is calling on the provincial government to work more closely with other jurisdictions to address water quality problems in Lake Winnipeg.

In November 2006 as part of its effort to reduce nutrient loading into Lake Winnipeg the Manitoba government announced plans to temporarily freeze new hog barn construction in much of the province and, with the September 2007 passage of Bill 17, the ban became permanent.

Conservative agriculture critic Cliff Graydon suggests a more reasonable approach would have been to follow recommendations put forward by the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission.

Clip-Cliff Graydon-Manitoba Conservative Party:
They said there had to be some work done and some monitoring done, that there was no place in southeastern Manitoba that was in jeopardy right now that was critical but it needed to be looked at and find some solutions to this.

So we need to go back to research and development, we need to see how we can limit the amount of phosphorus that would pass through.

We're talking about a very small portion of phosphorus that's going into the lake.

We need to look at a whole bigger picture.

If we're talking about the health of the lake we need to look at the whole water shed and that's both east and west and of course this premier and this government is certainly not working with the western part of the water shed as indicated by their absence from the new west partnerships and they're also not working very we'll with our southern neighbors so this is what we need to do.

If the lake is our big concern and I believe it is, we certainly all want to see the lake to be rejuvenated because it is the 10'th largest lake in the world.

We need to do these but we need to look at the whole picture not just one small segment of it.

Graydon notes the premier continues to refer to the hog industry as one of the major culprits when in fact the research has shown it contributes less than two percent of phosphorus to Lake Winnipeg.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council