Trudeau’s Plans to Combat Climate Change Rebuked by Farmers, Ag Leaders

“The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.”

Saskatchewan’s agriculture minister, David Marit

A plan by Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada to combat climate change by reducing the use of fertilizer is under fire from provincial leaders and farmers who say it will reduce output, cut into farming income and increase food prices at grocery stores at a time when the nation can ill afford it.
Similar proposals in Europe have led to furious protests in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Canadians acting in solidarity with those protests took to the streets of Ottawa and other Canadian cities over the weekend to vent their frustrations.

In the name of combating climate change, Mr. Trudeau’s plan is to reduce farmers’ emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, by 30 percent by 2030. The plan is similar to the measures taken by the Dutch government. Dutch farmers have been told they must reduce their use of fertilizers by 50 percent during the same time period for many of the same reasons.

The Canadian federal government’s goals came up during a meeting Friday in Saskatoon of the federal minister of agriculture and agri-food, Marie Claude Bibeau, and her provincial counterparts from Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan. After the meeting, the provincial agriculture ministers called Mr. Trudeau’s fertilizer plan worryingly arbitrary. 

Saskatchewan’s agriculture minister, David Marit, was blunt in a press release sent to local news outlets following the meeting.
“We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” Mr. Marit said in the release. “The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.”