Give Stan some love

A batch of environmental groups gathered this morning to say how angry they are that the province failed to extend the hog barn ban to the entire province, not just the central part.Sigh. Come on, guys. You won. The hog barns lost. The province finally did Lake Winnipeg a solid. It deserves at least one little kudo.Until now the province has been pretty much all talk on water. The Tories say it, and they're right. We've got the ban on dishsoap with phosphates, which would be cool except for the fact that it doesn't kick in for two years, at which time the soap makers were going to quit using phosphates anyway. We've also got a flurry of tiny rules that say you can't put your pig poop on this little patch of ground because it's too close to the river. But not until 2015 or 2020, so no worries. And we've got the nutrient management regs, which nobody but KAP and a couple scientists understand.Now the province finally gets serious, catapults beyond what the CEC even recommended and caps hog barns in the parts of the province where they are unequivocally out of control. Granted, they're being kind of machiavellian by hoping the crappy market culls the barns down to a manageable size.But still, Conservation Minister Stan Struthers probably has cauliflower ear from all the crabby phone calls he's been fielding from hog farmers. They are really, really mad.So, green folks, give Stan a break and acknowledge that the province has finally taken leadership on an issue after eight years of dithering.

Mary Agnes Welch, Winnipeg Free Press