ONLY CO-OPERATIVE, AMENABLE OR CO-OPTED CITIZENS NEED APPLY TO MUNICIPAL CONTROLLED COMMITTEES

I was advised of this reality by an activist who commented on the Cambridge Advocate website possibly ten to fifteen years ago. Her logic was unassailable in that the primary purpose of a municipal committee was both to give the appearance of public consultation on an issue of public interest as well as to have a group to hide behide if something goes wrong. The municipal councillors can deflect criticism from the public by simply saying well we are not the experts, we have dedicated volunteers (citizens) who read all the technical reports and advise us as to what direction we should be taking. Municipalities that are more experinced dealing with difficult issues such as contaminated sites within their borders have also learned the advantages of getting free advice from citizens who have professional backgrounds in the same or similar area. They do this by advertising specifically for citizens with a professional background in areas such as hydrology, hydrogeology, air contamination etc. These municipalities do this for self-serving reasons. Often they know full well how serious the situation is and the last thing they really want are honest, intelligent citizens who have no financial skin in the game. An honest citizen who does not need to worry about jeopardizing their job or alienating a provincial ministry (MOE/MECP) who their employer desperately needs goodwill from, can be dangerous to polluters, regulators and certainly the local power brokers (municipal councils). The actual "cleanup" protocols and processes have evolved over decades into a very comfortable, non-finger pointing, mostly quiet discussions involving Risk Assessments, exposure paths, toxicity levels, and away from blame, health studies, compensation claims etc. As usually the polluters have shared their disposal problems/methods with the regulators beforehand, those regulators (MOE/MECP) often become complicit in the highly optimistic beliefs in things like dilution and natural attenuation. ..................................................................................................................... Under a regieme like that, loud, insistent citizen voices demanding accountability and complete cleanup simply are not appreciated by the MOE/MECP, the polluter or the local authorities. Of course in an inherently honest system it would be the local governemnt, supposedly there on behalf of the people who would support them. Those days if they ever existed are long gone. The vast majority of politicians at all levels of government are there for their benefit not the publics'. Money and politics rule everything instead of what is the right thing to do versus what is the wrong thing. .......................................................................................................................... And so even with generally (not 100%) excellent people involved thirty years ago here in Elmira who were in control of their own committee, that has degenerated into a municipally controlled and stifled two committees today. Yes public consultation since 2000 has been so perverted that even the good people on TAG (Technical Advisory Group) can not make necessary headway. They are set up to be subservient to another group (RAC -Remediation Advisory Committee) who are nothing more than co-opted bureaucrats, municipal and regional politicians and appointees beholden to them. Lanxess Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Environment love it. They had popular, pretend mayor Sandy Shantz lead the charge in 2015 to remove the best public consultaion group there had ever been (CPAC from 2011-August 2015) in Elmira. That said the biggest failure was CPAC in 2000 rolling over and allowing municipal councillor Pat McLean to remove CPAC's independence and put them under municipal control. Dr. Henry Regier, Esther Thur and myself all argued against it but Pat McLean with Susan Bryant's help carried the vote. It's been downhill as far as being in the public interest ever since. I told you so back then. It will remain so as long as the "public consultation" is under municipal council control.