WITHOUT SPEAKING OPEN TO ALL WITH SOMETHING TO SAY, THEN IT'S A SHAM

The guilty parties minded their p's and q's early on. There was both a critical mass of angry people in the early 1990s and also the meetings were all attended by the media. Sometimes multiple media attended. It was also nice to see early on some squabbling between the guilty parties themselves. Unfortunately when that squabbling slowed down is when we should have realized that the "fix" was in. Most of us however were not of the mind frame or lack of ethics to even think like that. The polluter and his fellow travellors and synocphants all were however. No honest citizen could even fathom the depth of lying and deceit to which these parties would descend. .......................................................................................... The guilty parties (including politicians) have now emasculated public consultation. They've done such a good job that even the many honest TAG members don't know what has been lost. They haven't been involved long enough to be able to compare what the citizens had to what little they have now. Undoubtedly the worst came in 2000 when Pat sucessfully convinced UPAC members to become a committee of council. What an abomination that was and is. Then 2015 of course was particularly egregious and the public and media failed to make a big deal out of it. The Elmira Indepnedent went out of business at the end of July 2015 and RAC and TAG came into being a month later. The Observer always were mostly hopeless albeit Councillor Merlihan did protest at Woolwich Council unsucessfully. .................................................................................................................... Citizens need multiple voices especially when dealing with professional games players and liars. Therefore when the pros divert citizens off course or even simply interrupt them and hijack the discussion; that is when other citizens present need to step in and halt the crap that's going on. Also keep in mind that the guilty parties always prefer running in packs. Having Township councillors present, bought and paid for consultants and multiple employees all willing to step in and mix it up requires equal numbers on the honest citizens' side. Rarely are there enough citizens confident and willing to speak, present at public meetings. Then of course also in the early days citizens gave far too much respect to the Ontario Ministry of Environment. They showed their true colours with their ongoing private meetings and deals with Uniroyal Chemical. Uniroyal played hardball and had the MOE over a barrel because of their incompetent monitoring and less than useless enforcement activity.Uniroyal were always happy to hide behind the MOE's umbrella.