WINNIPEG – Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard, joined by Green Party Leader James Beddome, Manitoba Wildlands Director Gaile Whelan Enns, and Wilderness Committee Campaign Director Eric Reder, today spoke out against the NDP allowance of peat harvesting and/or mining in provincial parks today at the Manitoba Legislature.  The Hecla/Grindstone Provincial Park, adjacent to Lake Winnipeg, may be home to a 531-hectare peat mine.  An NDP-designed public consultation process could open the floodgates to many more peat mines across southern Manitoba, including in parks.

 “Regulations are urgently needed to allow continued and environmentally sustainable harvesting of peat for gardens and related purposes,” says Gerrard.  “While there is a place for peat harvesting in Manitoba, there is no place for mining in provincial parks.”

 The NDP have had 12 years to develop a peat land management strategy and regulations.  Instead, they have issued a temporary moratorium on peat mining in Manitoba.  Even with the moratorium, a loophole is allowing the NDP to permit new peat mines – including in provincial parks.  Environmental groups see this as a tactic to get around the moratorium legislated in 2011 and for the NDP to collect revenue through new peat leases and mines, including in parks.

 “The NDP moratorium is in fact not a moratorium, as about 200 peat leases are pending, with many others granted,” adds Gaile Whelan Enns, with Manitoba Wildlands.  “Rather, it is part of a pattern of the NDP saying they have a moratorium and doing the opposite.  This is no way to manage our province.”

 “Peat is a vital tool to preserve the health of our waterways and the temperature of our planet,” adds James Beddome.  “Provincial parks are intended to preserve natural landscapes, not to serve as places of industrial development.  The idea of a peat mine inside a provincial park is simply sickening.”

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For more information, please contact:

Nancy Chippendale: Communications Director – Manitoba Liberal Caucus

167- 450 Broadway, Winnipeg, MB  R3C 0V8

204.771.2513 – nancy.chippendale@leg.gov.mb.ca