Morgan: Gas stove ban would be problematic for Saskatchewan people

Comments out of the United States and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have people in that country — as well as Canadians — talking.

Last week, commission chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric said emissions generated from gas stoves could be hazardous for those who own them.

Those comments sparked rumours about a future ban on gas stoves.

While the commission stated it’s not looking to ban gas stoves, the comment has a lot of people talking about “what if” the government decided to place a ban on them.

Don Morgan, the provincial minister responsible for SaskEnergy, said the Saskatchewan government has been looking at getting more information on the potential hazards of gas stoves.

“We’ve asked for some information from SaskEnergy on it,” Morgan said. “If there’s a health issue, we’ll certainly want to know about it and see what needs to be done to mitigate that. It’s something that we need to get to the bottom of.”

While the government wants more information on the hazards of gas stoves, Morgan added that a ban on the appliances would be problematic for a lot of people in this province.

“There’s a significant number of people in our province who have natural gas stoves in their homes,” he said. “People have spent thousands of dollars putting natural gas into their homes for cooking.”

Morgan noted if something ever was going to take place, the government would want to look at the entire situation really carefully.

“Maybe there’s ways of mitigating the emissions from it. But I don’t think I would want to jump too quickly on one issue that’s been raised,” he said. “I think our goal is to understand what it is and determine whether there’s a real issue and how we would handle it.”

Morgan couldn’t say exactly how many gas stoves there are in operation in the province.