Some Ottawa Valley residents have come together to oppose aerial glyphosate spraying in the Ottawa Valley, saying it’s bad for people and the environment.
Ottawa Valley Forest Inc. was hired to spray 1,200 acres (five square kilometres) in September and was to finish around the end of the month. The chemical is intended to kill low-lying vegetation and help promote the growth of trees such as white, red and jack pines, along with white spruce.
This map shows the Ottawa Valley. The five square kilometre area being sprayed is within the red square.
Stop the Spray – Ottawa Valley Facebook group was started in August by Charity Parisian and has grown to 2,000 members who post daily about their concerns and actions against glyphosate use in the Ottawa Valley.
Parisian, an environmental technician with experience in the forestry industry in Alberta, said, “While I was (in Alberta), they never aerial sprayed, they always did brush saws, and did the manual work.”
Aerial spraying has been practised in parts of Ontario since 2001, and glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in Canada. It is even sold in hardware stores. Quebec, however, has banned the use of glyphosate in its forests, making it the only jurisdiction in North America that doesn’t use it. The Ottawa Valley case is part of a larger debate across Canada: how to balance forestry practices with environmental and human health worries.
Ottawa Valley Forest Inc. could not be reached for comment on the concerns about the spraying project. On its website, it notes it is the “holder of the Sustainable Forest Licence (SFL) for the Ottawa Valley Forest” and its shareholders are “wood processing facilities and logging contractors who operate in the license (sic) area.”
Maria Votsis, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, said in an email, “Forest managers with sustainable forest licences have the ability to make their own decisions on what method for controlling competing vegetation they use.”
Health Canada also allows for the use of the chemical. It says that, “used according to the label instructions, products containing glyphosate are not expected to pose risks of concern to human health or the environment.”
Not everyone agrees. “In the case of glyphosate, because the evidence in experimental animals was sufficient and the evidence in humans was limited, that would put the agent into group 2A,” said Kathryn Guyton, a senior toxicologist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The IARC, part of the World Health Organization, evaluates the cancer-causing potential of substances worldwide. In 2015, it classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Parisian also highlighted the potential impact on migratory birds that stay within the valley, which she said could unknowingly consume the glyphosate-sprayed vegetation. “If you’re spraying the top of the crowns, that’s where all the insects are, and where all the birds are coming to feed,” Parisian said.
Stacey Foley is the second administrator of the Stop The Spray — Ottawa Valley, and was involved in organizing many of the group’s events. The first event of the group was a friendly protest at the Ministry of Natural Resources office in Pembroke, Ont. The group also attended a Petawawa city council meeting on Sept. 15 to present its concerns about glyphosate.
“Really appreciate it and strongly support it. I have been anti-glyphosate for quite some time,” said Pembroke Coun. Adam Driscoll at the meeting.
“We share concerns for the environment as well. We have kids, we have grandkids, and we have to make sure that we protect the health of all of our offspring,” Petawawa Mayor Gary Serviss said at the same meeting.
“They agreed with us. They don’t want glyphosate, they don’t want it sprayed,” Foley said of the council.
Foley is a holistic nutritionist and worries glyphosate will make its way into local produce and affect the gut microbiome. “We need people to understand the effects of herbicides on the food chain, when it is being sprayed on the soil,” she said, adding that glyphosate is banned or highly restricted in more than 40 countries.
Concerns about glyphosate’s impact go beyond Ontario. The Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground, directed by sustainability and environmental activists Josh and Rebecca Tickell, highlights health issues they say are associated with glyphosate, including endocrine/hormone disruption and an increase of certain cancers for agricultural workers and communities near sprayed or treated areas.
The documentary also says glyphosate upsets soil health by killing important microbes that are essential for nutrient cycling. This makes the soil less fertile and more likely to erode. “Since chemical agriculture ramped up in the 1970s, we have lost half of the Earth’s topsoil,” it says.
