• Canadian Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations
  

Meeting in Ottawa, representative of four provinces faces with debates on the merits of insecticide spraying to combat spruce budworm discussed similarities and differences in their situations. Quebec and New Brunswick has long standing spray policies, New Brunswick having embarked on spraying in 1952. Newfoundland's provincial government, after resisting pressures to spray for several years, began a large scale spray programme in June 1978. In Nova Scotia the arguments against spraying had held sway and the severely infested forest land of Cape Brenton Island was not sprayed. In each case the decision to spray or not spray was provincial one. But the role of the federal government in influencing this decision was strong in each case. Pressure, especially from the Maritime Forest Research Centre in Fredericton, was decidedly pro-spray.

In conclusion, we feel it has been amply demonstrated that considerable evidence has been accumulated indicating risks, if not proven significant health hazards, associated with massive aerial insecticide spraying.