An organizer for the Saskatchewan Freedom Campout saw his company charged for environmental violations, but the entrepreneur says the provincial government carries the blame..Ecogenx Agriculture Recycling Ltd, owned by Dallon Leger of Yorkton, was charged for violating Agriculture Product Waste Stewardship Regulations and, by extension, the Environmental Management and Protection Act..In a Facebook post on Monday, Leger said his plastics recycling company was the victim of improper government regulations..“To this date, I have not had a single face-to-face meeting as our elected officials continue to hide. On Tuesday, March 22, two Conservation officers came onto my property to serve me with a summons to appear in court,” he wrote..“On April 11th I will be in court defending myself against this ridiculous overreach of power to fight for my company and to fight for farmers in Saskatchewan who use grain bags.”.“When is our law enforcement going to start focusing on catching criminals, rather than being government’s muscle? I am not doing anything wrong — yet here I am.”.Leger shared the story of his business, which began in 2017, in an interview with Western Standard in February..“I was 26 years old and I was a farmer that was burning plastic on the farm. And I thought to myself, ‘Plastic’s recyclable. Why am I burning this?’”.Leger added hustle to his idea to form what seemed to be a viable business..“I’ll come to your farm, I roll up your grain bags, I haul them away, and they get sent off to a recycling company in Arkansas. I’ve shipped over 4 million pounds of plastic with no government funding, no help from anybody, an entrepreneur stepping up to solve a problem.”.It wasn’t long, however, before the provincial government stepped in with its own solution. In 2018, they enacted the Agriculture Product Waste Stewardship Program. .“It states that you must be approved by the government of Saskatchewan to recycle grain bags. And to be approved, there’s a whole bunch of stipulations. You must be nonprofit, you must do this, you must do that. Well, of course, when they wrote the regulation, they wrote it in a way that helped another government program, another nonprofit organization. Clean Farms is based in Toronto, Ont. and they’re the ones that were approved to handle green bags in Saskatchewan,” Leger said..“I don’t need to be a part of this program. I sell the farmer the bag. When the bag is done, I go pick it up. I send it to the recycler. He turns it back into a new grain bag. And I sell it here — totally closed-loop system, the perfect recycling program.”.Phone calls to MLAs were in vain, Leger said..“I had CO’s [Conservation officers] show up on my property and threaten with me with a million dollars per day fine, three years in jail, and a criminal charge because I will not be a part of the government program,” Leger said..“All I said to the government was basically give me a one-year exemption from your program, and I will be transparent. I’m not hiding anything. I’m proving to you that I can recycle 100% of the bags I sell… They came back: ‘No, we’re not doing that.’ And then Clean Farms put out a request for proposal for on-farm services, exactly what my company does. It’s insane.”.“And then the government calls me and says, ‘Well, you need to apply for the request for proposal and work with Clean Farms.’ I said ‘No, I don’t. I’m here doing this. We do not need a government program to do it.'”.When 2022 began, Leger was forced to tell farmers he would neither recycle nor sell grain bags..“I don’t think it’s right to send the farmer’s money to Ontario and then have to charge them again for me to come and do the work. I’m a farmer. That’s not right. So I’ve had to shut down the biggest part of my business,” Leger said..“It’s really tough. I just do odd work and odd jobs and I’m probably going to be losing a lot of the stuff I worked hard for because I can’t do what my business is intended to do. Yes, I can go get a job somewhere and make some bills, but it’s not enough to pay for the five years of building my business up. I have large debts to pay for, I bought equipment to do this.”.In a Facebook post March 21, Leger announced he had sold his grain bag roller because of “the Government of Saskatchewan choosing enforcement rather than conversation” — a statement that proved even more true the next day when Leger was criminally charged..“In a time that my phone is ringing to clean up this plastic, I am having to say no. It is a sad day when government policy prevents small business from succeeding, resulting in another business closing, ultimately effecting the farmers needing a solution,” Leger wrote..“Today a big chapter is closed, tomorrow is a new day and we will continue to advocate for made in Saskatchewan solutions.”.Lee Harding is a Western Standard contributor living in Saskatchewan.
