On Earth Day this past Monday, a Northern Ontario group was at Queen’s Park, presenting petitions with tens of thousands of signatures calling on the province to ban herbicide spraying in our forests.
Stop the Spray Ontario was founded by float plane pilot Joel Theriault of Foleyet.
“Stop the Spray Ontario has one simple goal,” he says, “and that goal is to end the use of non-essential chemical herbicides within Ontario’s forestry industry and do this organically like Québec has done since 2001.”
Theriault says the chemicals cause cancer in animals and humans. And a U.S. company has been found liable for producing the chemicals.
He says there are several problems with the provincial reasons for not banning them.
“The big ones that the government continuously goes into is to say it’s approved by the federal government, it’s safe, and the response is well, then, why is Monsanto paying out $11-billion in cancer settlements?”
The province has until May 15th to respond to the petitions.
There’s a lot more detail in the audio of our interview.