THREE YEARS AGO TAG WERE RELUCTANT TO GO PUBLIC IN A BIG WAY

Basically Dr. Jackson, Chair of TAG at the time, told them that it might very well be necessary. He knew and said that the problems in Elmira were not technical problems they were public policy issues. In other words our politicians, local, regional and provincial were hopeless. They lacked the will for the fight necessary to get the Elmira cleanup on track. It was obvious to Dr. Jackson that the Ontario MOE were part of the problem versus part of the solution. The real solution was to go over the politicians heads and go directly to the public.

I did not blame the new TAG members for their reluctance. With the exception of two veterans on TAG with a history of making private deals and concessions to Uniroyal/Chemtura, the rest, even those with technical backgrounds, were totally new to the dynamics, the politics, the issues and the inherent dishonesty of the whole process. They were honest people still new to what they had gotten themselves into. They were not the least comfortable with news conferences and or speaking publicly about issues with which they had just barely gotten their feet wet. Dr. Jackson asked them to essentially jump off a cliff and to trust him. They respected him but they did not know him well. They hoped that there was a less dramatic method to achieve their goals. They were wrong and Dr. Jackson was correct.

I posted yesterday about the August 20/19 TAG Review Comments sent to Lanxess and to be presented to RAC (Remediation Advisory Committee) presumably on September 5/19 in Woolwich Council Chambers. I view those comments very, very positively. Lanxess and GHD will not. This is where the rubber meets the road. Lanxess will push back. They will respond just like Chemtura, Crompton and Uniroyal Chemical before them in the time honoured way. That is they will bullshit and bafflegab. This is exactly what they did with TAG and Dr. Jackson from September 2015 until the end of December 2016 when he departed. That is exactly what they have done since the start of the Uniroyal Public Advisory Committee (UPAC) in January 1992 with able assistance from Woolwich Council and friends.

Pat McLean and Susan Bryant essentially "captured" UPAC in the very late 1990s by filling it with their appointees only to throw it away by making UPAC a committee of Woolwich Council in 2000. They lost sight of the public interest by trying to please everybody. They knew that to keep their status and positions of Chairwoman (Pat) and secret executive committee member (Susan & 1 more) they had to please council, UPAC members, Uniroyal and the MOE. The two of them were excellent politicians whose primary goal was their own self-importance and enhancement. They told both sides what they wanted to hear and they sold out the public interest in favour of their own for which they were rewarded and honoured by both Uniroyal and friends and as well by local authorities such as the GRCA and the Region of Waterloo.

Yet again our authorities determined that their best interests aligned with those of big money and power, not with the publics' interests. They were experts in saying one thing publicly while making deals privately with the powerful. Pat and Susan understood this long before I did and cut their own deals with our local authorities and Uniroyal and successors. It has served them well, not the public.