Hundreds rally against Maple Leaf deal
November 16, 2005

Nearly 300 residents gathered last night at Michaelangelo's banquet centre on Upper Ottawa to hear more than a dozen speakers challenge plans by Maple Leaf Foods to build a hog processing plant on the east mountain.

The meeting called by Citizens Against Pig Slaughterhouses (CAPS) was also attended by councillors Terry Whitehead, Bob Bratina and Tom Jackson. The latter two spoke strongly against the Maple Leaf Foods proposal to move its Burlington facility to the North Glanbrook business park, while Whitehead said he was still deciding where he stands.

Bratina said councillors aren't getting good information from their staff and were kept in the dark about the proposal for months. "The first time we heard about it as councillors was in the newspaper," he told the crowd. "Now what kind of way is that to run a city?"

Richard Love, brother of the founder of the Barn food markets, lives across the road from the Nebo Road site selected by Maple Leaf. He told the meeting that the slaughterhouse proposal has cut his home's value by over $100,000. He pointed to recent fines of $828,000 against Maple Leaf's rendering plant in Greensville and suggested these showed that "Maple Leaf chooses to ignore the laws and pay the fines".

The co-chair of Hamiltonians for Progressive Development, Michael Desnoyers, called on the city to "engage and encourage a process that genuinely seeks public participation and collaboration prior to a decision" on the Maple Leaf proposal.

Desnoyers is CEO of a high-tech company that was the first tenant in an industrial park in Burlington in the early 1990s. Arguing that "birds of a feather flock together" he listed a string of similar technology companies that now share that site and warned the audience that facilities similar to Maple Leaf would follow it into the Nebo Road area.

CAPS is urging opponents of the Maple Leaf proposal to rally at city hall on November 23 when council is expected to decide whether or not to sell 46 acres to the pork processing company. A special meeting on the proposal has been called for 4 pm that day with a final decision likely to take place later that evening at the regular meeting of city council.

The city staff report on the Maple Leaf land deal is posted at
http://www.myhamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/85391E84-C0AB-49E6
-BAFB-B7B3E791527A/0/Nov07PED05092PW05104FCS05093.pdf.