UNHOLY ALLIANCE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys this article "Region backs brownfield projects". It is primarily a puff piece written to make us all feel good about a bunch of long ago bought and paid for professional politicians, doing their jobs, as seen by various wealthy elites. It's all about externalizing of costs and without government aiding and abetting this theft of taxpayers dollars it could never happen. We are advised by Community Services Commissioner Rob Horne that there are hundreds of brownfield sites throughout Waterloo region. These brownfield sites are of course former industrial and manufacturing plants who shut down leaving their contamination behind them, mostly in the ground and groundwater. The crap they released to the air is long gone and enjoyed by millions over the ensuing decades.

One recent redevelopment would be the soon to be built homes between Margaret Ave. and St. Leger St. in Kitchener. This site was formerly Pannill Veneer and before that Breithaupt Leather. Now there's a good Kitchener name that most should recognize. Leather tanneries used all kinds of acids in their processes as well as solvents. Riley Tannery in Woburn Massachusetts was made famous by "A Civil Action" starring John Travolta. Trichloroethylene from surface lagoons got into the drinking water and caused fatal cancers mostly in young children. A number of members of the Breithaupt family graced our municipal and provincial political scene over the decades. The fact that the nearby Lancaster St. Wells in Kitchener have been shut down for years and years only to be refurbished and restarted AFTER the environmental cleanup at the old Breithaupt Leather, I'm sure is mere coincidence.

So we now have current regional councillors like Jim Wideman singing the praises of tax incentives to clean up and develop old contaminated industrial sites. Talk about turning a turkey into a peacock! These same politicians in some cases had no problem with industrial sites being abandoned by their owners. Granted it is mostly provincial legislation and a myriad of intentional loopholes that let these criminals walk away unscathed in the first place. Oh wait a minute. They aren't criminals if they and their friends have lobbied and bought their way into the corridors of power before they behave in what only appears to be a criminal fashion. In other words killing someone with a bat, knife or gun is illegal but killing them as in the Bishop St. community in Cambridge via vapour intrusion of toxic fumes is merely good business. Afterall those businesses in Cambridge saved millions of dollars in proper disposal costs by letting TCE and 1,1,1 TCA leak into the ground. Did these millions of dollars in disposal costs go into the community via increased wages or did they go into off shore retirement havens for the owners? Did a few owners literally walk away unscathed while hundreds of local families lost members to premature death and illness due to intentionally lax laws and corporate loopholes?

How dare the likes of lazy, professional bull shit artist politicians like Jim and Ken Seiling brag about these incentives paid for once again by the overburdened taxpayers, to make a few developers wealthy. Citizens have already paid with grossly damaged environments affecting air, water and soil. They have already paid with their health. They have paid with lost taxes on those long time abandoned contaminated sites. Now taxpayers once again will pay up front for the cleanups that should have been done decades ago and should have been done by the guilty parties and weren't. Clearly "polluter pays" is and always has been pure political theatre. Finally shame on the media who further promote this twisting of a sordid industry/government alliance into something it is not.