Toxic investigation

The Minister of Natural Resources says they’re only in the first steps of finding out what impact Agent Orange had on some forestry workers between 1950 and 1970.

Linda Jeffrey, the Minister of Natural Resources, arrived in Thunder Bay for the 20th anniversary of Lakehead University’s Centre for Northern Forest Ecosystem Research on Thursday. Jeffrey, who took up her ministry position about a year ago, said she learned about Agent Orange from a former forestry employee a few weeks ago.

She said she spoke with that same worker last weekend to assure him she was working on the problem.

"At this moment, we’re trying to assembling all the information about it," Jeffrey said. "It happened in the 50s, 60s and 70s, a long time ago. In those days, they collected information on paper so we’re trying to assemble all those documents and determine what we need to do."

The Toronto Star reported on Feb. 17 that the Ontario government began experimenting with Agent Orange, used to strip the jungles of Vietnam, in 1957.

Records from the 1950s, '60s and '70s show forestry workers — often students and junior rangers — spent weeks at a time as human markers holding balloons on fishing lines while low-flying planes sprayed toxins on the brush and the people below.

Jeffrey said she and other ministers will work on gathering all the information possible. She added that she planned to form an independent panel in order to get more information.

But finding a definitive answer on what impact Agent Orange had is still too soon to tell.

"It would be really premature to speculate," she said. "Right now I’m just trying to collect information. It’s really early stages, we’re only in the first steps of it."

The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has set up a dedicated phone line (1-800-387-0750, extension 416-344-4440) for anyone who may have questions and the ministry is making information available on its website, she said.

The Star said in its report that it had obtained documents that showed the province experimented with a powerful hormone-based chemical called 2,4,5-T — the dioxin-laced component of Agent Orange — in Hearst, Ont.

The documents, filed at the Archives of Ontario, describe how the planes had 140-gallon tanks containing the chemicals, which were usually diluted in a mix of fuel oil and water.

Less than a decade later, the Department of Lands and Forests — now the Ministry of Natural Resources — authorized the use of a more potent mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T for aerial spraying, the Star reported.

Over the years, spraying was done by both the province and timber companies. Hundreds of forestry workers were involved, but the documents do not give an exact number.

Jeffrey told the Canadian Press that the ministry stopped using 2,4,5-T in 1979, and the federal government removed it from the herbicides registry in 1985. It's no longer used in Ontario, she added.


With files from the Canadian Press