The Ontario cabinet has decided to cut the use of a seed-coating pesticide that has been linked to the mass death of bees across Ontario and North America. In the first phase of the cutback, neonicotinoids will be phased back to 80 percent of the acreage by 2017. There are outcries from the farmers that this will cost them money and some who say it is a cynical political tactic by the Liberals. The issue must be whether, as is widely said, honey bees are vanishing from the countryside. CANOE
