GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS

The good news is that I am feeling very good about the willingness and cooperation demonstrated by the TAG Chair to ensure that TAG are seen as transparent and accountable. I have recently here advised of the unfortunate incident whereby neither CPAC, the general public, nor TAG members had been given a copy of a Director's Order issued upon the owner of the contaminated (by Uniroyal) property on the immediate east side of Uniroyal/Lanxess, three years ago. July 26, 2017 to be specific. I had made some assumptions/educated guesses as to the source of the failure to distribute the document to all stakeholders and it turns out that my assumptions/educated guesses were just that and no more. Included in my educated guesses was the belief that our illustrious mayor (Ha!) had been involved and did the Ministry of Environment a favour by agreeing to their request not to distribute the Order.

After further discussion/e-mails it now seems clear that indeed our very own, not in the public interest, Ontario Ministry of Environment are the culprits, all on their own. All communications I have received lay the responsibility for the non-public, non-distributed Order directly at the feet of the Ministry (MECP). That they may have been persuaded by the property owner (Ron Stroh) not to distribute the Order is a possibility. That that non-distribution included the Township of Woolwich is both remarkable and contemptible. That it included the TAG Chair and members is frankly shocking. That it included CPAC and the public is merely disgraceful and totally typical of the MECP and their partners in pollution Uniroyal/Lanxess.

In my book "Elmira Water Woes: The Triumph Of Corruption, Deceit, And Citizen Betrayal" I make my position on the decades long behaviour of the Ontario Ministry of Environment, by any name (MOE/MOEE/MECP), exquisitely clear: their sole purpose is to protect the government of Ontario, not its' citizens and certainly not the environment. They have done this by aligning themselves with the powerful players (multi-national corporations) and simply negotiating face saving deals because the Ministry know that they do not have government backing to come down hard on the big polluters. This is the bad news. This failure to inform stakeholders and the public is exactly what we've come to expect from this co-opted friend of polluters.