SAD STATE OF TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY & HENCE DEMOCRACY

When it takes the appropriate agency nineteen months to come to a decision regarding a blatant case of local government failing to properly respond to legitimate concerns from a citizen/taxpayer, then you know their written response is likely to be a crock. When during that time 99.5% of their questions and requests for information have been to the local government and friends (consultants & MOE) with almost zero requests for either clarification or additional evidence to the citizen complainant then you know what to expect. Finally when the agency's (Ombudsman Ontario) report is issued not as a Draft for comment to the complainant but as the final report, you can smell what's coming. Lastly when the Decision or final report is all of four and a half pages in length yet allegedly took nineteen months to "investigate" it becomes obvious that they have done the most superficial "investigation " possible. I mean let's be perfectly clear here. When you have already determined to give maximum weight to all the pearls of wisdom dropping from GHD's, MOE/MECP, Woolwich Twp.'s lips AND to give zero weight to any and all evidence/facts/technical reports provided by the complainant, then it's all a foregone conclusion.

The Ombudsman's "Decision" is mostly devoid of any discussion or specifics of the technical issues surrounding the generation and migration of landfill gases, specifically methane at all municipal landfills. It does not for example indicate best practices in regards to methane monitoring or methane collection. I had provided fourty very clear and specific questions to Woolwich Township regarding past, present and future practices and actions specific to the Bolender Park Landfill. With absolutely zero rationale or explanation, council advised Woolwich staff that they didn't have to respond to any questions that they felt were "historical" or previously answered by anybody. Staff then made the unsupported and totally false claim that 38 of my 40 questions were in their opinion either "historical" or previously answered by somebody, somewhere. I repeat there was absolutely no attempt to back up that ridiculous claim/position with any rationale or references to previous answers to my questions. There was no reason given as to why alleged "historical" questions were forbidden or even what defined "historical" questions. Were they "historical" if they referenced data that was five years old, five months old, five days old?

Meanwhile the Ontario Ombudsman gobbled up every bit of nonsense of Council's decision to limit their responses to this citizen. The Ombudsman made zero attempt to justify the refusal of Woolwich Township to answer specific questions relevant to the acknowledged methane problems at this landfill next to two industries (Elmira Pet Foods, 86 Auto Recyclers) and to homes on High St. and George St. in Elmira. Just one more example of high handed covering up by one government agency (Ombudsman) of transparency and accountability failures of local government.

P.S. Barry Your usually ignorant, rude and fourth hand observations and comments as usual will not be published.