MPP Michael Mantha’s News from the Park – Bear Wise, MNR & MTO Issues
MPP Michael Mantha, Algoma-Manitoulin
Recently we have seen the Ministry of Natural Resources make some massive cuts to many of their programs, including the Bear Wise Program. These cuts have down loaded the responsibility of wildlife management to local municipalities and police forces. This has unfairly burdened others with the associated costs, time, and risk of wildlife management which should be the responsibility of the MNR.
With the loss of the Bear Wise program we are seeing an increase in bear-human conflict and we feel the MNR should regain control and responsibility of this growing concern. Instead, the government announced that they will begin a 2 year pilot project allowing for a selective spring bear hunt to deal with the problem of nuisance bears. Growing frequency of these encounters goes hand in hand with 10 years of Ministry cutbacks and downloading – this is an attempt to undo the damage a disconnected Liberal government has already done to the North.
During his announcement, Minister Orazietti repeatedly emphasized that municipal police forces are inappropriate and ill-equipped to manage nuisance bears – MNR cuts forced that downloading on to these very communities. These are the same Liberals that cut the funding of MNR by 30% and decreased services to Northerners. I hear from many constituents in Algoma-Manitoulin who have been negatively impacted by MNR cuts.
The Legislature has already passed my colleague John Vanthof’s motion that gives Northerners the opportunity to recommend how to properly manage nuisance bears: what the MNR’s role should be in dealing with nuisance bears, bear populations, and should there be change to the bear hunt. We believe that we should strike a committee and get down to work, hearing from experts and locals on the introduction of a spring bear hunt across all northern communities. The Liberals have been in office for 10 years, if they wanted to re-instate the spring bear hunt they would have done it by now. Why wait until an election looks likely?
In other news, New Democrat MPPs launched the Northern Road Report in the winter of 2012 because it became clear that northern roads were not being cleared properly and on time and the Ministry of Transportation was ignoring the problem.Thousands of northerners sent us tips on uncleared roads which we then presented to the Ministry of Transportation.
It is due to your participation and New Democrats work that the Ministry finally announced that it was increasing its budget for road clearing and that it had bought new equipment.
Northerners need to make sure that the Minister actually follows through this winter. Your continued participation is important; please continue sending instances on bad road conditions to our NorthernRoadReport@gmail.comaddress.
As always, please feel free to contact my office about these issues, or any other provincial matters. You can reach my constituency office by email at mmantha-co@ndp.on.ca or by phone at 705-461-9710/1-800-831-1899.
MPP/député Michael Mantha, Algoma-Manitoulin
