Millvale – The Green Party of PEI is shocked that Premier Ghiz is giving close to $2 million to a company that was all but run out of the province in 2008.
Atlantec Bioenergy tried to set up a sugar beet ethanol plant in PEI but faced strong public opposition and a government that wouldn’t agree to mandating 10% ethanol content in PEI gas without public hearings. The company walked away saying it would try Ontario instead.
Since then, said Green party leader Sharon Labchuk, the company has surfaced in Pennsylvania where the owners live and in Nova Scotia with grand announcements about jobs and big ethanol plants that haven’t materialized.
“Now these guys have come back and behind closed doors have managed to get their hands on our money,” said Green leader Sharon Labchuk. “The same objections to this scheme still stand. We want to know why the Premier didn’t hold public meetings. This company has made no secret of the fact they’re looking to grow sugar beets on an industrial scale in the Maritimes.”
Labchuk said a major shift to a new industrial crop in PEI brings increased risk of nitrate-polluted groundwater, pesticide-contaminated air and impoverished soil, and the Premier has an obligation to the people of PEI to ask if this is what they want. According to news reports, the company will be planting Monsanto’s genetically engineered sugar beets.
“The United Nations this month warned the world that we must produce 70% more food by 2050 to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing population yet every day we lose more farmland to bad farming practices, roads, cities and industry,” said Labchuk. “Do Islanders want to be part of the problem by encouraging the conversion of food farmland to ethanol farmland? Or do we want to produce more food for hungry people in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment?”
The bandwagon for ethanol went off the rails years ago when studies started showing no environmental benefits at all said Labchuk. It’s only kept alive by ethanol lobbyists with high-level connections to Prime Minister Stephen Harper who is responsible for mandating 5% ethanol content in gasoline and showering the industry with billions in subsidies, she said.
“It was sneaky and underhanded to spend our tax dollars this way when the Premier knows very well there has been significant opposition to ethanol and that Islanders are more interested than ever in supporting local organic food production over industrial monoculture crops,” said Labchuk.
Contact:
Sharon Labchuk
902-621-0719
902-626-7327 mobile
slabchuk@greenparty.pe.ca
