TORONTO — Under pressure in a round-table discussion
at TV Ontario’s Studio Two, Minister of Agriculture Helen Johns said
Ontario didn’t have enough corn to supply an ethanol industry. For
Ontario to support an ethanol industry it would have to grow only corn.
"There is only so much corn you can produce," she said.
"You have to have crop rotation."
In an ambivalent rebuttal to criticisms that the Tories
in Ontario hadn’t done enough for the environment, she said, the
government had given a break at the gas pumps for ethanol and had given
money to both the Chatham and Cornwall plants. "We’re looking at
other plants," she told the panel. But Ontario isn’t going to
create a market for U.S. corn, she said.
Meantime, opposition leader Dalton McGuinty told a
press conference in St. Andrews that if the Liberals are elected in
Ontario there will be large scale opportunities for ethanol production.
The Liberal platform calls for the construction of five new ethanol plants
in Ontario, he said, adding that the plants will more than double demand
for Ontario Corn.
The Liberals say will require gas to be five per cent
ethanol by 2007 and be comprised of 10 per cent ethanol by 2010.
