Manitoba’s Premier says investments in environmental infrastructure will benefit both the environment and the economy.
As part yesterday’s speech from the throne the Manitoba government has reaffirmed its commitment to enhancing the resilience of the province’s natural infrastructure to meet climate-change challenges.
Premier Brian Pallister says numerous environmental benefits can be derived through projects like protecting threatened species, maintaining biodiversity, shelterbelt renewal and water retention programs.
In terms of environmental initiatives and where that stands, we’ve advanced our green plan and we’re going to continue pursuing it because we believe in it. We believe climate change is real. We believe that the consequences, in particular for provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan for our agricultural industry are significant with additional flooding, wildfire issues.
The weather patterns are changing and fewer and fewer farmers I talk to dispute the need for us to take the steps we have to take to assist in doing our part on addressing climate change. But they also want to see practical on the ground green initiatives that will assist them in their farm operations, assist their communities in creating jobs there and so that’s why I’m really excited about, for example, our conservation trust.
We’ve committed to putting 100 million dollars in the conservation trust mechanism over the next three or four years that’s going to result in local projects of good value all over rural Manitoba that I think will be tremendously important as many that we’ve undertaken in the past have been in seeing us do our part to protect our environment in our areas, protect our habitat, protect our wildlife species, do the things we need to make sure we hand the beautiful blessings we’ve been given in this province on to the next generation.
That’s our job, fiscally and environmentally.
~ Brian Pallister, Premier Manitoba
Pallister says his government remains committed to its Made in Manitoba Green Plan.
