Maple Leaf Backs Out of Jobs Promise
August 13, 2005

Maple Leaf Foods has reneged on a promise to add a second shift and 900 more jobs at its Brandon, Manitoba pork processing plant. A similar promise is reported to be part of the enticements being offered by Maple Leaf to shift production from Burlington to a brand new facility on Hamilton mountain. The Burlington plant has 1300 employees, but media stories say this would be expanded to 2500 jobs in a new Hamilton location.

The job expansion promise to Brandon was made in 1999 when Maple Leaf opened a new state-of-the-art facility employing 1300. The company said it would add a second shift "within three to five years". The company now wants Brandon and the province of Manitoba to pay the costs of an upgraded waste-water facility required to handle 100,000 pigs per day.

Canadian Press reported on Tuesday that the expansion is now "on hold indefinitely". The announcement came just days after Mayor Di Ianni and four Hamilton councillors were flown out to Brandon by Maple Leaf as part of the company's efforts to win their support for a Hamilton plant.

The CP article reported that "Maple Leaf officials say a downturn in the pork market and the lack of a sufficient waste-water treatment plant in Brandon are what is holding back the expansion." On the same day a Maple Leaf spokesperson was quoted in the Brandon Sun that "there would need to be more funding" from the government before growth plans are put back on track by the company.

The subsidy demand is being opposed by both the newspaper and the Brandon Chamber of Commerce. "We encourage growth but we don't want it to be on city dollars" said Chamber president Randy Brown. The Brandon Sun praised this stand in an editorial titled "Don't tip the trough" published on Wednesday.

"If taxpayers are expected to put up cash to attract businesses here, let it be for new high-tech, high-skill industries", wrote the paper's editors. "How much more will local taxpayers be forced to do without if the provincial and city governments cave to corporate pressure and put more public cash into a wastewater plant for Maple Leaf Pork?"

Map shows location of the Maple Leaf plant in the industrial area (grey) on the east side of Brandon near the Assiniboine River. The yellow areas are residential.

The province and the city paid for the existing wastewater treatment facility to entice Maple Leaf to Brandon in 1999, but the treatment plant needs to be renovated and expanded to handle additional flows. It currently treats five million litres of sewage per day and pumps it into the Assiniboine River. This includes seven tonnes a week of phosphate which must be reduced under new provincial water quality regulations.

The proposed Hamilton facility was condemned at a raucous public meeting this week attended by about 350 mountain residents. Much of the crowd's anger was directed at councillor Terry Whitehead, the chair of the city's planning and economic development committee, who told the gathering that Hamilton doesn't have "the luxury to say no to economic development" like the Maple Leaf proposal.