TAG MEETING IS APPROACHING

The month of October was skipped as far as any public TAG (Technical Advisory Group) meetings went. As a general rule I think that that is a very bad idea. Every skipped meeting in past decades has always turned out badly. Badly that is for the environment and honest citizens. Unsurprisingly Chemtura, their consultants and the Ministry of Environment always seemed to enjoy the time away. If nothing else they need to be publicly accountable at a minimum on a monthly basis. Even when the accountability is only semi-public they need to be held to account on a monthly basis. Anything less makes it far more likely that issues will be lost or forgotten.

The next meeting is Thursday November 16, 2017 at 6:30 pm. in Woolwich Council Chambers. I'll be honest I far preferred it when Dr. Richard Jackson was the Chair of TAG. If Chemtura/Lanxess and the Ontario M.O.E. thought that they were going to get a free ride with Dr. Jackson as Chair rather than Dr. Dan Holt and the last CPAC; boy did they get a shock. Dr. Jackson was nobody's fool and he also knew when the will was absent and the excuses were thick and stinky. He just hammered Chemtura, CRA and the M.O.E. for their verbal drivel, excuses and downright failures. He made me and CPAC look like we were wearing kid gloves when we dealt with those three dishonest groups. In fact he also made Sandy, Mark and other naive or not Woolwich Councillors look stupid for alleging that CPAC were too hard on the guilty parties and then bringing in Dr. Jackson to whip them into line.

None of this is a criticism of the new Chair person, Tiffany Svensson. I'm sure that she has her own strengths and if her style is different from Dr. Jackson then so be it. Her style, however more gentle than his, at the same time should not be construed as either criticism of Dr. Jackson nor should it be viewed as some kind of vindication of Dr. Jackson's departure nor of CPAC's departure as a committee of Council. Quite frankly I am so disgusted with this Council's behaviour that I would be hard pressed to want to be on any committee of Council ever again. The majority of CPAC members feel the same. Simply put those asses aren't deserving of honest, informed volunteer citizens working on behalf of the public interest. The citizens are deserving but their representatives on Council generally are not and never have been.