UNIROYAL CHEMICAL ISSUES NEVER GET RESOLVED: EVEN THIRTY YEARS LATER

Public consultation in Elmira is like a merry-go-round. The participants are constantly changing whereas the direction (and issues) are not. How could they be. All the guilty parties are in charge of the Agenda, the cleanup, the makeup of the public advisory committee, and all the rest. Every now and then a new Documentary comes out that at least briefly opens people's eyes as to the failures and frustrations of dealing with a multi national, multi billion dollar rogue polluter protected by the municipality (Woolwich), the Region and the province (Via Ministry of Environment). ....................................................................................................................... Currently we are talking about the Canagagigue Creek exactly as we were in 1996, 2012-14 and 2018-present. We have talked about DNAPLS from 1992-94, 2006-2008, again in 2012 etc. Hydraulic containment battles went on from 1992-97 and even recently the MOE/MECP are advising that 500,000 litres of contaminated Upper aquifer groundwater are being discharged to the creek every day. Why is this? Well it's simple. The guilty, self-serving and lying parties are in charge of the cleanup and their goal is to constantly downplay the damage done and constantly minimize the costs to both the polluter and the public's purse to clean up the mess. In this they are somewhat and sometimes opposed by honest, intelligent citizens looking out for the public interest. That interest includes aquatic life in and around the creek, it includes restoring Elmira's formerly excellent groundwater resources and finally it includes human health considerations of fouled air, ground and surface waters. The guilty parties merely give lip service to the public interest. The politicians goal is to get themselves re-elected so that they can continue to have all the perks with the minimun effort required. ..................................................................................................................................... Failure to resolve difficult and thorny issues is also the goal of most politicians. Never solve a problem that will eventually solve itself, regardless of the negative consequences of letting the problem fester for decades. Generally speaking politicians are masters of "managing" problems, not of solving them. Too many social problems are a direct result of the wealthy abusing the system for their benefit usually at the expense of many others. Whether we are talking gender, racial or religious inequality; there are parties who directly benefit from such behaviours. Our economic system is based as much as possible on cheap labour allowing private individuals to make money off the backs of their employees. Having an "underclass" who are willing to work for peanuts in order to survive is how most wealth was accumulated in the first place. Anti-unionism is as much about cheap labour and the legal right to get rid of those who stand up for themselves as it is about being forced to listen to your inferiors (i.e. employees). On one hand we are advised by our governments that immigrants bring skills (and money) into the country. On the other hand we know that desperate people will work under horrific conditions with little money and if they quit our government will assist employers in bringing in more low wage workers. Think of our agricultural sector in Ontario. ............................................................................................................................................ With our current democratic deficit in Ontario/Canada there was never any hope that Uniroyal Chemical or it's followup owners would ever do the cleanup job promised the public between 1989 and 1993. Uniroyal made far too much money by dumping their wastes on, in and around their property rather than properly treating them as much as possible. They externalized their costs on to the public, the environment and all the other downstream life forms. Local residents who sufferred and died from cancers and other diseases caused by toxic contamination were never remotely considered stakeholders by Uniroyal or our authorities. They were considered expendable assets until the environmental and human damage became too obvious. Then it was and always has been about our political authorities "managing" the cleanup so as not to offend the wealthy and powerful who keep them in power.