Manitoba’s Green Party said March 31 it would ban mining and logging in provincial parks if elected as the province’s government in the April 19 election.
“Our parks were created to preserve biodiversity and provide Manitobans with a place to relax, and to enjoy and learn about the wilderness,” Dauphin constituency candidate and Green Party deputy leader Kate Storey said in a news release. “And yet our 14 parks contain 792 mining claims, 22 mineral exploration projects, four mineral exploration licences, and extensive logging. Manitoba is one of the few places in the world which allows mining or logging in provincial parks.”
Resource management areas in northern provincial parks, where resource extraction is permitted, comprise 75 per cent of Grass River Provincial Park and 12 per cent of Paint Lake Provincial Park, both of which are designated to allow mining activities, the Green party says. And in the case of wilderness parks, where resource extraction is not allowed, the provincial government in the past has simply changed designations, as it did in 2003 when it split Atikaki Provincial Wilderness Provincial Park in two and created South Atikaki Provincial Park where mining activity is permitted.
The old Spruce Point copper mine site in Grass River provincial park was found to be leaching high concentrations of heavy metals, the party says, despite having only operated for five years and having been closed down since 1993. Grass River Provincial Park is also the site of Hudbay’s Reed Mine copper project, which the government approved in 2013.
“Our parks are being sacrificed for shareholder profit,” said Storey. “But Manitobans are starting to realize that responsible environmental use actually creates more jobs in the long term than resource extraction. Mining and logging do not support healthy ecosystems and do not fit into the vision of our provincial park system. The majority of Manitoba is already open to mining and logging. Surely we can keep these destructive industries out of our provincial parks. The Green Party calls for a ban on mining and logging in all provincial parks.”
The Green Party also unveiled its platform April 5, which includes a pledge to place a moratorium on new hydroelectric dam construction and diversify Manitoba’s electricity production by promoting solar and wind generation capacity.
