On Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, elected officials in New Brunswick’s Legislative Assembly debated a motion about the spraying of glyphosate-based herbicides in the province’s Crown forest.
The motion, brought forward by Gagetown-Petitcodiac MLA Ross Wetmore (PC), called for the formation of a working group made of government departments and outside stakeholders to look at the use of glyphosate in our public forest and present a report with recommendations to government within nine months. It also called for a suspension of spraying glyphosate-based herbicides in the Crown forest until the working group submitted its report to the Legislative Assembly.
You can read the Hansard of the full debate here.
The Conservation Council has long called for a phase-out of glyphosate use in New Brunswick’s Crown forest.
Do you want the spraying to stop?
More than 1,800 New Brunswickers have already written their MLA calling for the end of glyphosate-based herbicides in our forest.
We’ve made it easy for you to stand with them. Send your letter now!
The Conservation Council advocates for a precautionary approach against using glyphosates in silviculture and maintains that it is time for the province of New Brunswick to adopt twenty-first century forestry and silviculture practices that protect public health, the health of our forest and the plants and wildlife living there, and that create more jobs in our woods.
Quebec banned the use of herbicides in its public forest in 2001 due to public concern over the human health impacts of spraying and an Environmental Impact Assessment of the practice. Spraying was replaced with thinning crews of men and women working in the woods.
“Creating good jobs and protecting our health and the health of our forest is very important to New Brunswickers,” says the Conservation Council’s Forest Conservation campaigner, Tracy Glynn. “Following in our neighbour’s footsteps by using thinning crews instead of chemicals that have been connected to cancer is just good common sense.”