As part of the Manitoba government’s proposed legislation to reduce out-dated, contradictory, complicated or ineffective regulatory requirements imposed on businesses, industry and local government’s changes could occur to making permitting a hog barn a little less cumbersome.

Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said the government is committed to eliminating the barriers that prevent business and local governments from thriving and expanding. “The red tape reduction and government efficiency act would amend or repeal 15 pieces of legislation to reduce the red tape that is creating burdens on business, non-profits, municipalities, private citizens and government officials.”

The one line in the government release said, “Remove general prohibitions from The Environment Act for the expansion of hog barns and manure storage facilities.”

According to Andrew Dickson, general manager for Manitoba Pork the provincial government wants to make it easier to build hog barns and manure storage facilities.

It is part of the government’s effort to reduce red tape and unnecessary regulations.

Dickson said as part of the proposed legislation the removal of a clause in the Environment Act that mandated the use of anaerobic digesters for hog operations because it was totally redundant. All the regulations that deal with manure storage and handling and application to land are all still in place. While removing one clause doesn’t mean he expects to see a surge in the industry building new barns. There are still a number of regulations in place, adding it would also have to make sense economically for producers to start building more barns.

In January, Manitoba Pork Chair George Matheson welcomed the Government of Manitoba’s recent commitment to repealing the Manitoba Farm Building Code and amending the Manitoba Building Code by adding specific provisions for farm buildings. The current farm building code is based on a commercial industrial standard and is not appropriate for low-occupancy farm buildings such as barns.

The amended Manitoba Building Code will mean that producers will no longer be forced to incorporate unnecessary requirements into the construction of barns. “We estimate the new provisions will save producers tens of thousands of dollars when building barns,” noted Matheson, a pork producer near Stonewall. “This action by the Manitoba government will help our industry stay competitive with other jurisdictions while maintaining high safety standards to protect farm workers and livestock.”

Mike Teillet of Manitoba Pork said producers are hoping to have a clearer indication by summer of what changes the provincial government will make to speed up the approval process for new hog barn construction.

The two largest processors Maple Leaf in Brandon and HyLife Foods in Neepawa need at least another million hogs per year to replace the production lost over the past decade and provide the numbers necessary to allow the processing plants to move closer to capacity.

Teillet said there is considerable interest in building or expanding finishing hog capacity from existing producers and new producers including some who left the industry and looking to come back.

“The biggest challenge is simply the processes that they have to go through in order to get a barn built,” he said. “Right now it’s taking on average probably nine or ten months or more to get through all of the processes. It is one of the things that is a real drag on people wanting to get into the hog business as well as people wanting to expand. We’ve looked at a number of different things which we think can make the system work much more smoothly and quickly and still at the same time protecting the environment and so on.”

Teillet said they’re not trying to get around environmental protections and that sort of thing, but trying to make the system work more efficiently. “We’ve had a number of meetings with government people to go over some of the processes and try to suggest ways where we feel the system can be improved,” he said. “I believe we’re getting a fairly positive feedback from the government but at this point, we haven’t seen anything as to what direction they’re headed but we know they are looking at it very very closely.

Teillet hopes to have a clearer idea of what the provincial government has in mind for this summer. •

— By Harry Siemens