The town of Hudson’s former director general Louise Léger-Villandré was sentenced to 30 months in prison during a Quebec Court hearing Monday morning in Valleyfield.
In December, Léger-Villandré, now 66, pleaded guilty to six of 19 criminal charges she faced, including charges involving more than $1 million that went missing from town hall coffers between 1996 and 2013.
She appeared before Judge Michel Mercier Monday morning for about 20 minutes. A red suitcase with her belongings was brought into the courtroom moments before she was whisked away to begin serving her sentence.
Léger-Villandré, who appeared calm and collected as she waited for her sentencing to be formalized, didn’t make a statement before the judge.
Crown prosecutor Mathieu Longpré and defence lawyer Robert La Haye had agreed to recommend a 30-month sentence.
ALBERT KRAMBERGER, SPECIAL TO MONTREAL GAZETTE, MONTREAL GAZETTE
MONTREAL, QUE.: AUGUST 10, 2015 — Former Hudson Director General Louise Léger-Villandré and her defence lawyer Robert La Haye appeared in Sallaberry-de-Valleyfield court, on Monday, August 10, 2015 following her Oct. 9, 2014 arrest for 19 charges of fraud in which a reported $1.1 million in municipal funds was misappropriated. (Dave Sidaway / MONTREAL GAZETTE)
Posted: Saturday, October 3, 2015 6:00 am
Letter to the editor by Lynn Palmer | 1 comment
Public concern about spraying herbicides on our local forests is not new. For at least 20 years, the issue has circulated in the public sphere.
Surveys undertaken since the mid-1990s indicate that the general public in Ontario deem herbicide use on publicly owned forests unacceptable.
This past March, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the United Nations’ World Health Organization) declared that glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide, is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” and public concern over spraying has intensified. On Sept. 5, the California Environmental Protection Agency announced that it plans to label glyphosate as a “chemical known to cause cancer.”
Opposition to glyphosate-based herbicide spraying and linked petitions have been increasing from New Brunswick to California. In Ontario, people living in and around Dog-River Matawin, Kenogami, Ogoki, Martel, Magpie, Timiskaming, Sudbury, Black Spruce, and Nipigon Forests, among others, have expressed to the province and some forestry companies that they want their voices to be heard. The message is clear. It’s time to get serious about implementing alternatives.
Our Crown Forest Sustainability Act requires all harvested areas to be regenerated. After cutting, some of those stands are left to regenerate without much intervention; however, some require significant effort to direct tree growth to meet goals for merchantable timber.
Chemical treatments have been used for many years to impede the growth of competing species (such as poplar, shrubs, or grass) that compete with conifer tree growth following logging. Glyphosate, the most commonly used herbicide for such treatments, is applied through aerial application as standard forestry practice in Ontario.
All logged Crown forests are required to meet forest regeneration targets, but there is nothing to dictate that chemical treatments must be used. For many years, local people have been questioning why we aren’t using alternatives.
Quebec banned the use of glyphosate on their public forests in 2001 and in 2008 the Liberal government passed a ban on the use of similar herbicides for “cosmetic purposes” in our province. When the Ontario ban was enacted, it was considered the toughest pesticide ban in Canada. Why are public forests treated so differently?
One forest company in Ontario has shown its willingness to take the leap with local people to address their concerns and work together to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of herbicides.
The Herbicides Alternative Project (HAP) has been jointly initiated by Tembec, Mushkegowuk Environmental Research Centre (a not-for-profit that supports First Nations in Muskegowuk Territory) and several First Nations in northeastern Ontario.
The goal of HAP is to develop and implement a strategy to regenerate forests on Tembec tenures in the region using alternatives to the application of chemical herbicides. This program is now under way, demonstrating that it is possible to have well-managed forests without the use of herbicides, to support local forest-based economies and community values.
Lynn Palmer
PhD candidate in forests sciences at Lakehead University
THUNDER BAY
April 6, 2015
Organic Meadow Co-operative Inc. files for creditor protection; will continue business-as-usual during restructuring process
April 6, 2015 – Guelph, Ontario – Organic Meadow Co-operative Inc., pioneers of the organic milk market in Ontario, has filed for creditor protection in order to complete a restructuring of its operations. The company’s goal is to emerge from the restructuring in a stronger financial position. The filing comes as an unavoidable and necessary move due to the onerous business terms recently placed upon it by the province’s milk marketing board.
“This is about protecting the earned rights of the founding farmers of the organic dairy category in Ontario. Organic Meadow Co-operative members account for over 70 percent of the supply of organic milk in Ontario. In filing for protection, and restructuring our business, we are protecting the very rights of our farmers,” said Don Rees, CEO, Organic Meadow Co-operative Inc. “Our goal is to work with the milk marketing board and all of our creditors to put a restructuring plan in place that allows us to emerge from this process stronger, and which allows us to work with Dairy Farmers of Ontario [“DFO”] in growing the organic milk market we started in 1989. We want to reassure all of our customers, employees, suppliers and consumers who have come to love and trust Organic Meadow products that we will be operating business-as-usual during this restructuring process.”
“All of the Co-operative’s dairy farmer members are disappointed that we could not find a resolution which would have enabled the Co-operative to continue conducting business without the need for creditor protection. We view the filing as a short-term action that will enable the company to complete a restructuring process that began a few months ago,” said Ted Minten, Vice Chair, Organic Meadow Co-operative Inc., who along with this extended family has been farming organically since 2002. “While our new business model was beginning to significantly improve our results and we were well along a process to bring in a new investor group, substantial milk allocation shortfalls in the December to February period and the change to business terms by our largest vendor were impossible hurdles for us to overcome. We’re hopeful that through this process we can work with DFO to reach a mutually beneficial solution.”
