A RESOUNDING SILENCE IN ELMIRA, ONTARIO

Public consultation has been destroyed in Elmira, Ontario and the guilty parties are all around us. Yes Mark and Sandy are front and centre but most importantly is the Ontario Ministry of the Environment & Climate Change. Next are the media and finally there are the citizens of Woolwich Township themselves. Literally for many years only one media outlet routinely covered CPAC meetings and that was the Elmira Independent. Occasionally the Waterloo Region Record would carry a story about the Aquifer cleanup progress or the lack thereof here in Elmira. Similar with CKCO-TV. The other local paper at the time absolutely ignored CPAC (Chemtura Public Advisory Committee) which later morphed into the Citizens Public Advisory Committee. Regarding Woolwich citizens what was needed was greater support of the only media that routinely covered public CPAC meetings and then published the news in their paper. It didn't happen and the Elmira Independent is now history.

The MOECC mandated some form of public consultation back in 1991 in order to regain the confidence of the people of Elmira. Clearly decades of lying and puffery as to how the Elmira drinking waters were being protected by the province via the MOE was now obvious to all. Therefore UPAC (Uniroyal Public advisory Committee) was formed with assistance from Woolwich Township. The Township were careful however to keep the committee independent and at arms length. They also had little or no credibility due to their failures to push Uniroyal and the M.O.E. much harder over the previous decades. Basically any citizens or groups who had the interest and time were given a seat at the table. Nowadays the Township have usurped this citizen independence albeit they did it via Pat Mclean, the Chair of CPAC and Councillor, back in 2000. The rest of the UPAC/CPAC folks were lulled into a false sense of complacency by Pat and agreed to becoming a committee of Council. How has that worked out you idiots? The last two Councils have preemptorily trashed the old CPAC members including Pat herself in 2011. She is indeed a manipulator and always has been.

The last public meeting was held on September 7, 2017. This was a RAC (Remediation Advisory Committee) meeting and as usual had zero input from the public. Appointed citizens by Council to the complete exclusion of other interested and knowledgable citizens is absolutely no one's definition of public consultation. A refusal to take questions from the gallery is a mockery of public consultation. The next public meeting is a TAG (Technical Advisory Group) meeting on November 16, 2017. It will likely be more of the same with the public denied permission to speak or ask questions. News flash Council and other pompous public officials. Citizens do not require your permission to speak out about public interest matters. You have broken public consultation. Either you fix it or we will.