Stop the Spray: Why Are We Spraying Northern Ontario’s Forests?

Okay. Let's talk about the chemical herbicides that they're spraying in the forests here in Northern Ontario and let's talk about why it's happening as well as what the path forward looks like to stop it.(...) And so I think the first part of this and the most important part of this is basically to say(...) what's happening and why is it happening. A lot of people see the signs that are up on the side of the

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in regards to chemical herbicide use being(...) applied in a forestry context and it's being used to kill all deciduous vegetation. It happens after the forestry timbering takes place. And so basically the forestry company will go into a forest. We're in the boreal forest and most of this is mixed and so it might have a half dozen species of(...) trees that are growing here,(...) spruce, birch, poplar, pine,(...) maple, different types of spruce, cedar. And what they're doing is they're going through these mixed(...) composition forests. They're taking out(...) just the money trees. They want the conifers. When you go to(...) Home Depot, Home Hardware, you buy lumber, you buy SPF and it stands for spruce pine fir. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know that because I just thought it was all pine(...) or fir.

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So that's what they're pulling out for harvesting

veneer. But those markets are smaller and so it's harder to sell that product and it's not quite as valuable to the forestry companies. The big money, what they really want is pure conifer plantations. And so they're going into these areas and some of them are pure pine trees or pure(...) spruce. But usually most of the area that I'm in, it's very mixed. It's very diverse. The forest, you fly over it and there's all these different species all growing together. They go through it. They take the trees that they want. They bulldoze

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maintaining a safe space for the owls and the other birds. And then the next step is basically, okay, now it's time to replant. And the replanting looks like pure conifers because that's what the forestry industry wants, is they want SPF lumber. They don't want these different species because they're not worth quite as much. And so if you're thinking about it(...) in terms of a farm and a farmer can say, "Well, if I get 10 bucks an acre for corn and I get five bucks an acre for beans and I get three bucks an acre for something else, I'm going to make all corn because that's where the money's at." And that's what they're doing essentially in the boreal forest up here in Northern Ontario is they're converting massive amounts of mixed growth(...) boreal forest with a half dozen species of trees into a single species, which is replanted conifer, which is usually up here spruce and sometimes they plant pine. And(...) the(...) chemical herbicides are being sprayed in the forest renewal stage. So after the cutting takes place,(...) next they have to replant. And in Ontario, the forestry industry, they're honestly a bit lazy. They'll wait four to five years to go back into a site to replant. I think it gets to a point where the government says, "We're not going to allow you to cut anywhere else until you go back and replant those areas that you cut five years ago." And then the forestry company goes in and they're like, "Oh my gosh, we're shocked in five years. Now the deciduous vegetation is like six feet tall. The birch and the poplar are like six feet tall and we want to replant the cheapest, crappiest little seedlings that are like this big and they're conifers, but now there's all this shade from the deciduous vegetation because we were too lazy to go back and replant five years ago. What are we going to do about it?" And the government says, "Well, you can use any tool you want in the toolbook." And the forestry company says, "Well, Monsanto, let me just load you up with a bunch of chemicals, put it into some helicopters and just blanket spray the forest,

(...) government's found out in the 50s with a lot of these chemical herbicides was that if they spray them in the spring, everything dies, everything dies. But if they spray them in the fall, like late July, August, September, the conifers are going into a dormancy stage to be ready to survive the winter months. And for whatever reason, they don't soak up the poison. And so they survive it. And so in the 50s, 60s, they sprayed Agent Orange all over Northern Ontario for this same thing, basically to wipe out all the deciduous vegetation in the replanted areas. And then about mid 60s, basically somebody said, "Well, I don't know about this Agent Orange, it's making all these birth defects for the guys overseas. Maybe it's not the best option." And one of the scientists here said, "Well, let's just use half of Agent Orange.(...) Let's use just 2,4-D." And from a consumer standpoint, you know that as Kill-X, which was pulled from the shelves like 20 years ago because it was super, super toxic and also bioaccumulating up the food chain, killing a lot of people, look up dioxins, 2,4-D, Kill-X, easy to find.

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So then basically they pulled 2,4-D from consumer use and real shortly after, probably about 20, 25 years ago, they pulled it from forestry use about 20 years ago. And then they said, "Well, glyphosate, glyphosate's the next best thing, safer than table salt. You can pretty well drink this stuff and no toxicity, super, super healthy." Of course, when you go to a meeting, you ask them to drink it, they won't drink it.(...) But they'll tell you it's just as good as table salt. And so for the last 20 years, it's been glyphosate and the consumers know this product as Roundup. And in a forestry context, it has many different names depending on the company who makes it. But the big ones are Timberline and then one of the big ones that made it to the news lately was called, I want to say...

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I want to say it's called Mad Max, but don't quote me on that one. There was a court case that just went through(...) the courts in Ontario or in Canada about a registration for a forestry herbicide. And basically the court said that the federal government, the PMRA, the Pest Management Department,(...) improperly approved the approval of this forestry chemical herbicide because they refused to look at all of the evidence that was not presented by Monsanto. And they were exclusively focused on the industry evidence. So the industry goes out and says, "Oh, we sprayed this amount on 17,000 tadpoles,(...) but we're going to show you the study for the three tadpoles that survived to prove that all tadpoles survive." And so this is the study we did and the government said, "Okay, we believe it." And then basically the public went in and said, "What about all these other studies that say it's like super terrible?" And the government's like, "We're not even going to look at those." So it just went through court here in Canada and the federal government said to(...) the PMRA, you have to go back, you have to look at all the public studies that were presented and explain why you're not even going to look at them and why you're just believing the Monsanto evidence. And so that's still in the works.

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So let's go back to what's happening, why it's happening.

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After the cutting,(...) yeah, go ahead.

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So(...) how did you get involved in this? And tell us before we get into the other part, tell us what drove you to get involved into the Stop The Spray? Sure. So I'm a third generation tourism outfitter. So behind me, I've got a couple of beaver float planes on the dock. And(...) so my livelihood

out in the wilderness. And over and over again, these places that were really, really special to me(...) were getting destroyed by

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a couple of years ago, they sprayed the hillsides on the side of the creek with glyphosate herbicides.(...) It ran down into the creek.

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One of the things that often happens in these rivers, and you can see it from the air, is after they spray these chemical herbicides, you end up with long black

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algae that used to be living algae. And then basically, it chokes out the(...) oxygen. And then all that(...) debris chokes up the spawning beds and then the fish die. And so it's like, here was this spot that I grew up in and I could go catch 50 trout every time I went there. And then now I go there and there's nothing. It's dead. It's dead. Maybe it'll come back in 50 years if I go back and restock it. But(...) south of the creek, the trout are gone. What about the hillside where they sprayed? Are they logging or doing anything with it or they just sprayed it? Well basically, they go in and log first and take the timber that they want. And spraying is happening in the renewal stage. So the forestry companies, after they do the cutting, they're required to replant. And the government basically says, "Okay, we have to have a certain percentage of conifers

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replanted at the end. So if this area started as 50% conifer, it's supposed to be at least 50% conifer at the end. Realistically, we're getting more and more conifer, at least from what I can see.(...) But the Ontario government requires them to go replant.(...) And so they went in, they harvested the timber that they wanted, they bulldozed the timber that they didn't want. They left a couple of trees standing to satisfy the government that there's some trees for the birds to make nests in. And then basically,(...) five years later went back and said, "Okay, now it's time to replant. And we got to get rid of all these birch and poplars that have grown in the last five years. Let's spray it all with herbicides." Now, if you think about your house and where you've grown up and just the experiences you've had and you think about degraded soil, like sandy degraded soil, what grows best in that environment? Deciduous vegetation. Grass, birch, poplar,(...) maple, stuff that has a leaf grows a lot better than the pine trees, than the conifers, because those little needles can't suck up a lot of sunlight to grow very efficiently. So(...) the forest floor was super rich in life, and then they spray it with glyphosate and it kills the vegetation, but it kills the life in the soil. And then a lot of that soil ends up eroding and washing down into the creek beds, washing down into the lower valleys, leaving more sandy,(...) dead soil. And then they plant the smallest seedlings that they can buy because they're cheap.(...) And then a couple of years later, they go back and they say, "Such a shocker. The small little conifers that we planted, it's like they're not growing in this degraded soil. And it's like, we've never seen this before. And the deciduous vegetation that grows naturally in crappy soil is growing faster than the conifers we want to do.(...) What are we going to do? What are we going to do?" And they ask the government, and the government says, "You can use any tool you want." And they say, "Monsanto, send us more helicopters and send us more tankers and we're going to spray everything again with glyphosate."(...) This is also part of this court case that's happening right now. Pretty sure it's called Mad Max, the herbicide. And Safe Food Matters brought it to court. EcoJustice was the law firm that brought it. That's an environmental NGO, which basically stands for a nonprofit environmental law firm.

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Great firm. I article with those guys as a lawyer about 25 years ago. And(...) one of the parts in this lawsuit for the approval for these herbicides is to say that in the approval itself, it says, "The chemicals are only going to be sprayed on one chunk of forest one time in 80 years." But what we're seeing is that almost everywhere that's logged is getting sprayed twice, sometimes three times before all the deciduous dies and it becomes pure conifers. So another little chunk in the story of problems.(...) So in 2000... And that's just more to run off into the environment. Every time they spray, it's just going to run off eventually? Well, one of the things that I hear the forestry industry talk about a lot of times is they'll say, "Oh, this product, it binds so tightly to the soil that it can't possibly run off." And then, "Okay, well, what about when the soil runs into the waterways?" Well, that's a little bit different. One of(...) the examples that I go back to that I think is a good one is when Ontario banned cosmetic pesticides. They did all sorts of studies in Southern Ontario creeks and rivers. And what they found was the year before versus the year after they banned cosmetic pesticides, like Roundup on people's lawns, there was like a 90% reduction in these chemical herbicides in the local waterways. Which begs the question of, "Well, if it's binding so tightly to the soil and it's impossible to run off into the waterways, why is there a 90% reduction in these chemicals in the waterways the very next year after they're illegal?" Well, it's because they do go in the water and it's obvious they go in the water. And they're also being dropped out of the back of helicopters, creating big wind vortexes(...) from a couple hundred feet above the tree line. So you've got helicopter wind vortexes, plus you've got crosswinds. And some of these products could go... I've seen studies out of California that go miles.

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But on average, what I see is a couple hundred yards(...) drifting(...) to kill full grown(...) birch and poplar trees that are 50 or 60 years old. You can see it from the air. You can see it from float planes as you're flying over. And these areas that are sprayed are super, super obvious because it's like, "Oh, there's(...) 10,000 dead birch trees that were fully alive last year and all of the vegetation in that one mile by one mile block is burnt." And "Oh, look at that. It just happens to line up with the spray maps published by the Ontario government for last year."(...) Yeah, obviously this is what happened here. And it's(...) strikingly(...) noticeable and easy to pick out. You've got a super lush green forest and then you get to a spot where it's gray. Usually the season that it's sprayed, about a month and a half after it's sprayed, the entire area is bright red,(...) dying. And then the following spring, everything's gray and dry.

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One of the big things that's happening right now, people are talking about is forest fires. And there's a correlation that's being made between the chemical herbicide spraying and the forest fires. And it's(...) partially true in two ways. I mean, the first way is definitely eight months after they spray, the area is super dry and all the deciduous vegetation is dead and all that's left is dried out(...) deciduous vegetation that's perfect to light on fire plus conifers, which is perfect to light on fire. So that's one(...) part of the tie-in with forest fires. The second one, the bigger one is(...) they're creating these massive(...) conifer(...) plantations. And if you think about like Christmas time, Christmas trees lighting on fire,(...) conifers are like the perfect fuel source for forest fires.

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Something about the oil and the needles is just extremely combustible. So combustible that we're seeing more and more cities. And what they're doing is they're bulldozing(...) big strips around the city and they're bulldozing all the conifers out and they're replanting all deciduous. We're just letting the deciduous come back in naturally because when big forest fires are happening, it gets to that stand of deciduous. The deciduous holds the moisture in the ground. It holds the moisture in the leaves and in the trees. And it actually just stops the fire(...) from continuing better than any forest fire crew could possibly do.

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When you've got a mixed composition forest as we do in our in our unlocked remaining areas and you've got, you know, one conifer next to(...) a birch, next to a cedar, next to a poplar, you've got a lot of moisture in there and it slows the fire down and it makes it a lot more controllable. And when you get big chunks of big strips of pure deciduous, it stops the fires. They can't,(...) they just can't burn through it.

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So let's go back to(...) why they're spraying and what Quebec has done since 2001. So they're spraying chemical herbicides in the forest renewal stage and they're doing it to kill all of the deciduous vegetation because it's the cheapest way(...) that they can put it because it's the tool that's available to them. And(...) then they're replanting little tiny seedlings that are the cheapest seedlings that they can buy. They're maybe six month old plants.

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And then they're spraying the site again for a second time with(...) chemical herbicides because in that degraded soil, the conifers have a hard time growing, but the deciduous vegetation thrives.

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In Quebec, what they started doing in 2001, they made it illegal to spray these chemicals as they said, okay, you guys have to go replant immediately after you cut. So if you go, if you go replant like the next spring(...) before the deciduous vegetation has had a chance to grow six feet, now the forest floor is, is clean. It's just(...) dirt, right? There's nothing growing yet.(...) And then they forced them to replant larger seedlings. They'll, they'll plant maybe seedlings that are 18 months old and they'll maybe be 18 inches and they'll have a big ball of nutrients on the bottom(...) to help them grow faster. And then in some sections of the forest where(...) the deciduous still takes over six or seven years later and the replanted conifers can't,(...) you know, get above the sunlight, they'll send in crews with brush saws and machetes to knock down some birch and poplar. The result, everybody gets a mousetag every year. The chemicals aren't entering the waterways.

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Obviously less human exposure for these chemicals for the tree planters and also for the people who go out blueberry picking and fishing and hunting. And they really prioritized human health and the environment. And in, in my tourism world, I have meetings with top executives on the, on the forestry side of things all of the time.(...) And I've always, you know, this has been a big fight for me in tourism with these guys. And it was always like,(...) why can't you just stop spraying these chemicals and, and replant earlier like Quebec does bigger seedlings and then hire locals with some brush saws to knock down some birch and poplar. And the answer is always the same. It's about a 1% profit margin difference. If they use chemical herbicides(...) and expose all of us to glyphosate or they do it how Quebec does it, which is organically. So that means that like 10 guys sitting on a board of directors in Texas with big bellies, get a million dollar bonus at the end of the year, or they don't. So every year they raise their hand and they say,(...) give those guys in Northern Ontario, the glyphosate, give us the bonus. That's the only reason it's happening. There's actually no other reason. And(...) I'm not saying it's, it's,(...) you know, it's not more expensive to, to renew these sites without the use of these chemicals. But what I am saying is that if the Ontario government's job is to manage the resource in the best interest of the public, it's not in anyone's best interest to be exposed to these chemicals. The only people that are benefiting from these chemicals is literally like 10 guys on a board of directors that are getting a bonus at the end of the year. And it's a 1% profit margin difference to renew the forest with or without these chemicals. It's, yeah, it sounds, it sounds like(...) replanting(...) immediately, you know, the following season is a lot, it's a lot greener than spraying(...) the herbicide on there. And they're going to get the forest back. But like you said earlier, the forest, the forestry companies are a little bit lazy. Well, I want you to imagine like you've got a seven year old and you tell them you have to clean your room and then you go, you go the next day and you see, you didn't clean your room, go clean your room. And then the next day you say, you still didn't clean your room, clean your room. And then finally on day five, you say, if you don't clean your room, I'm not going to give you ice cream. That's how it works for the forestry industry here in Ontario. That's exactly it. You know, they're just lazy and it's like all they have to do, they know how to do it. Most of them have their head office in Quebec. They operate in Quebec. They know exactly how to renew the forest without these chemicals. They're just lazy and greedy. And it's like simple. It's so simple. Go back the year after you cut, plant bigger seedlings with a nutrient sack, just like you do in Quebec. And four or five years later, if the birch and the poplar start to outcompete the pine in one little specific area of the clear cut. And it's really important to you to protect those pine trees.

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Hire six locals with chainsaws or brush saws and go in there and knock down some birch and some poplar. And then you're good. That's it. It's so simple.

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They're just lazy and cheap.

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Getting back to the water, how close do they spray to like, what's the water quality going to be like for those who live in the cities? Are they, are they getting the herbicide in their water?

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Is there any chance of that even happening or are they spraying so remote that it's not going to happen and just go to the Great Lakes and wash away anyway? Well, I think that's a, that's a super fantastic question because that is where this all gets linked together. So if you live in Toronto, you're like, oh, those people in Northern Ontario. If you live in Ottawa, oh, those guys in Northern Ontario. And you got to ask yourself, well, where does my drinking water come from? Well, the boreal forest dumps into the Great Lakes and it dumps into the Ottawa River. So that means when you're sitting in Toronto and you open up your tap, you're drinking a small amount of these chemicals every day. And the only justification that the Ontario government can give you is that you just helped 10 guys sitting in Texas get a bonus this year. And that's why your kid gets leukemia.

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That's it. So not even the most sophisticated water filtration plants in the country like Ottawa or Toronto are capable of removing(...) glyphosate herbicides and their breakdown products from water(...) at the water filtration plants prior to sending it to your house. So like these little tiny communities that live up here, they don't even stand a chance. So there's a petition online that was put up a couple of years ago. It's on change.org. If you, if you Google stop the spray, Ontario, let's go through a couple of points(...) because I think that there's a lot of good chunks in here. The number one reason why we should stop spraying these chemicals in the forests in Northern Ontario is because there are a wide variety of nonchemical alternatives which currently exist to effectively meet(...) vegetation management needs. And so I've had guys from BC reach out to me(...) who have said, you know, like(...) I had I had 500 goats and sheep and we would go into an area and basically we would(...) the goats and the sheep would only eat the deciduous vegetation. They wouldn't eat the conifers. They didn't want it.(...) They would completely clean out these sites and they did it for decades. And then basically the the chemical, the chemical industry lobbied the forestry industry.(...) Forestry industry stopped renewing the contracts. So it's like, well, I had 500 sheep and I used to get a contract every year.(...) What am I going to do with them now? They're not making me any money. I guess we're going to eat them.

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That's a that's kind of a fringe vegetation management tool. It is it is effective. But the big one that Quebec does is they hire locals with brush, saws and machetes to go in and knock down some birds from poplar. If it starts to compete the pine trees, I've got pilots here that work with me that have worked in those kind of operations. They'll go for a couple of months in the wintertime and use a big it's like a backpack like a it looks like a big

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it looks like a big whipper snipper and you got a blade like a circular blade about six feet in front of you(...) and(...) yeah.

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And they go out there and just mean to help maintain the forest.

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But yeah, they hire they hire locals. And so this is another this is another big one. It's like when you when you use chemical herbicides, you pay one guy in a helicopter, you pay Monsanto for the chemicals, you pay one guy in a truck and that's it. And when you when you do it with brush, you go to these remote communities where they have extremely high unemployment rates and you spread the benefits of the forest to the people who actually live there and need jobs. And so(...) not using chemical herbicides, you know, for a lot of the guys in the forestry industry, they're they're terrified. They're like, oh, my gosh, it's going to take away our jobs.(...) It increases the jobs. It spreads the the employment benefits wider and it and it allows people who have a grade six education to get a job, not just a helicopter pilot and and it's more people that have jobs and especially more people who live in these remote communities because they don't want to bust them up from Toronto to the middle of nowhere to go cut the timber. They want to hire the guys from the middle of nowhere to go cut the timber, right, who don't have other jobs available.(...) Yeah, that makes more economic sense. It was especially the the chop. The cost of a chopper is north of two to two thousand bucks an hour plus plus plus. Right. Depends on what it is. I mean, anywhere between two to five thousand bucks an hour. So(...) second point on this petition is basically we need to stop spraying these chemicals because it threatens the inherent rights of all Canadians to safe and chemical free drinking water, wild plants, wild animals and fish. Now we talked about drinking water earlier, not even Toronto or Ottawa can remove these chemicals from the drinking water. The boreal forest is the drainage basin for the Great Lakes, the Ottawa River, and it also goes to the north. So you're drinking it down down in southern Ontario. Just as I am.(...) Wild plants is an interesting one. The forestry companies, when they do their cuts and they do the spraying, they'll put up a sign that says the berries may be eaten the following year. But the science(...) says that a year later.

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The raspberries are still so chemically contaminated that they can't be sold at Walmart(...) because they they don't pass the the federal safety standards because basically the.

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The raspberry absorbs the chemicals in its roots and then the following year when it wants to get rid of the chemicals, it pushes it up into the blueberries and then people go out and blueberry pick and raspberry pick. And then they eat these chemicals and the bears eat them, the other animals eat them. So, you know, eating blueberries and raspberries out of a sprayed area, even the year later, probably not not what you want to do with your kids.(...) So(...) that begs the question, you should, if you can, buy the organic berries because they. If you can't, you can go out to the bush and go get your own berries.

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But even on the bush, they will have been sprayed.

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Somewhat, somehow. I think I think the big question is like, is like knowing if they've been sprayed and that's that's a hard one. You know, I was flying over two vehicles today on a site that was sprayed(...) two years ago and it's like I'm looking at these vehicles. I know they're down there picking raspberries and blueberries. I doubt that they have any clue that this area(...) was sprayed with chemical herbicides like so thick that it killed full grown birch and poplar trees.

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The signs are taken down by the forestry company(...) the following spring, right? So you kind of have(...) to be hopeful and you have to kind of know, OK, this area was sprayed, this area wasn't sprayed. These blueberries are going to give my kids leukemia. These ones won't. And for non-locals, it's pretty hard. Well, even the wild blueberries are, you know, have a chance of(...) getting the spray. But question for you, what part of the province are you in? I'm in Timmins area. OK, OK. Just so the viewers know relative.

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I'm seven and a half hours north of Toronto. I'm three hours, three and a half above Sudbury. Yeah, OK, OK. So like, you know, we have blueberry picklers all over the place here in Sudbury.

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Is there any way to know where can(...) we find out? Is there a website that shows when it's been sprayed? Yeah, so the the(...) Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources used to publish spray maps annually on paper paper maps. They would actually mail them out to anybody who is interested. And I'm still on the list and I still get the spray maps. But interestingly enough, on the paper spray maps, they stopped putting the locations of the spray. They send out blank spray maps for the last three, four years.

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You can Google it and like type in like Ontario herbicide spray maps.(...) And it brings you to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources website. And, you know, I would consider myself an expert in this subject matter. And I still really, really struggle to try to get through their website and to try to find a spray map for my area. It's like it's really, really hard. And I think I don't know if they've intentionally made it super hard for people to find spray maps or if the people who work there are just negligent and don't know what they're doing.(...) But,(...) you know, it's I think that your best bet is is to bug the M&R and email them and say, hey, this is where I live. This is the area where I want to go blueberry picking. Can you send me the spray maps for this area for the last five years so I can see if it's been sprayed?(...) Because to try to go back and find, you know, the spray map from twenty twenty five and then twenty twenty four and twenty twenty three, it's almost impossible. They've made it almost impossible to find that information. It's not it's not easy.(...) Good luck. You know, it's buried. It's buried. It's so it's so deeply buried. Even if you want to look for this year's spray maps and you typed it in, go Google Ontario Chemical Herbicide Spray Maps, Sudbury Forest. Google it. Good luck. So is there any way that spray the stop the spray

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the website, stop the spray Canada or stop the spray. Ontario could put the spray maps on there. So some so everyone would have a central location to go because by nature, everyone's lazy. Only the only things people care about is what are they going to do later on after work?

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And even if they nobody is going to, in my opinion, contact the M&R and ask for the spray mask. But if they can type it in on their phone, they'll look it up. They can go to stop the spray Canada. And that's(...) that's a person that's Ontario based as well. And it's a group, it's a small group. I'm part of that small group as well.(...) There's a website and that would probably be the best starting point to try to find to try to find those maps. One of the challenges we run into with with that website is it's a volunteer organization. We don't really have a funding source. Once in a while somebody will drop 50 bucks, you know, or 100 bucks into the go fund me page and we'll put up a highway sign.

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But there is no staff to do it. So it's really just a couple of people. OK, well, I have a free Sunday afternoon. I'll dig whatever I can dig up and put it up there.

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So there is some of that stuff on the stop the spray Canada website. It's a good starting point. And, you know, email M&R is also a good starting point as well. And(...) yeah, that's the best thing for now. OK, well,(...) that's that's a lot for now. But(...) let's see what we can do to try to help you out and get the well, help the organization out and, you know, building awareness, because I think the hunters, the anglers and hunters, if they really knew what was what was out there and what they could. Like so when you when you hunt the deer or moose, you're probably eating it. Yeah, you're ingesting. That's the only that's the only reason for me to go hunting.(...) So I only hunt animals if my intention is to eat them. And so I'll I'll hunt ungulates. I hunt moose and I hunt deer. And so that's another really, really interesting part of this whole scenario is basically

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for the wild animals in the states, there was published data put out by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in regards to herbicide spraying that was happening in a forestry context. And(...) what it said was that you can't allow your livestock to go out and graze in these areas immediately after spraying glyphosate, because there was a risk that the glyphosate would enter the the meat and make the meat contaminated to a point where you had to throw away the meat. It would also contaminate the(...) the milk for milking animals. And one of the big problems that was cited in the U.S. reports from the U.S.(...) USDA(...) was that when mammals are exposed to these chemicals during the first trimester of pregnancy, it has a much higher rate of miscarriage. So if you talk to moose hunters and you say, OK, you know what, we're going to go calf hunting this year, most moose hunters are going to be like, oh, my gosh, that's like a waste of time. Like chances of seeing a calf. It's so slim. And(...) the U.S. government and the Canadian government both recognize that ingesting glyphosate in the initial stages of pregnancy has a much higher rate of miscarriage. Like it's it's a very it's a contributing factor. You know, it's kind of like cigarettes. They can't say that it causes cancer, but we all know it causes cancer. Can't say glyphosate causes miscarriage, but we all know it causes miscarriage. Same thing, right? So(...) they're spraying these these clear cuts that are like three to five years old that are absolutely full of deciduous vegetation, which is the prime feeding areas for all the moose in the area. And they're spraying it basically in August and September, which is exactly lining up with when the moose are breeding. And then the next spring, the government acts like it's shocked that there's so many cows that don't have calves when they've just sprayed the moose as best food source with chemicals that cause miscarriages. And then they blame the hunters and they say it's all the hunters fault. That's why there's not enough moose. We're not even going to consider the fact that we sprayed like sixty five thousand hectares of of the best feeding area with chemicals that cause right when the moose are breeding and they're eating in there.

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And we're not even going to consider looking at at some of these studies that basically say that when a farmer wants to use these products on his field, it's illegal for him to let his cows go graze immediately as he has wading interval because if the cows go in graze immediately and then they're slaughtered, well, then the meat is toxic, so toxic that it can't be sold to Walmart. But for all you guys that are moose hunting, deer hunting, bear hunting, not even going to worry about you guys, you know.

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And when I approached the government about this years ago and said, like, hey, I've got this bear that I shot to eat and when I'm eating it, I'm getting headaches, I'm getting nausea, I'm getting like dry itchy eyes. We're we're getting like violent like headaches. Me and all my friends and my family, I want the meat tested. Yeah, if you think it's contaminated with chemicals, just like throw it away and go get another one. There's no testing program available for wild game in Ontario.(...) Right. Whereas other jurisdictions like when they have like chronic wasting disease concerns in Wyoming, it's like, yeah, you can get your meat tested for free.(...) So you would just think logically if there's concerns about chemical herbicide ingestion, that the government would say, yeah, if you're worried about your your wild meat being like super contaminated, you can get your meat tested for free. But the answer instead is, yeah, you have to throw it away and maybe you get another tag in 30 years or maybe you'd be dead by then.

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So that sounds like that's the wild game issue. And that's why hunters should really be jumping all over this. And so if you guys are members of the OFAH, that's the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. They say they represent like 100000 anglers and hunters. Call those guys and ask them, hey, why are a handful of dudes that stop the spray pushing this? Why aren't you guys helping?(...) So those are those are the guys that really need to jump on board with this one. So if you're part of that group, reach out to those guys as well.(...) And.(...) Well, I think that would be a good place to go, Joel. That'd be a good starting point. Yeah. Thanks for joining us this afternoon on short notice. And yeah, let's see if we can get a hold of someone from the OFAH.(...)

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