SMEAR CAMPAIGNS WORK BEST WHEN DONE SURREPTICIOUSLY

 This post is only partially addressed to my troll, Barry. He is indeed a hypocrite, uninformed, biased and impaired physically and I expect mentally as well. He likes to comment rudely on my posts but does so from a position of ignorance. He neither reads local writeups (Observer/K-W Record) of TAG or RAC meetings nor does he attend either virtually or in person. He has never attended so much as a single meeting yet feels that he is an "expert" much like other experts proclaimed by Lanxess, GHD and even the MECP.

Part of the conspiracy ongoing by our world class polluter and corporate successors has included puffing up certain selected individuals as representatives of the public interest. In the early days we all thought that was a sign of respect for the grass roots citizen group APTE. We were wrong. That public support and access given to a couple of individuals was self-serving albeit over the long haul. It turned out that a couple of citizens with great manipulative skills slowly weaned several members out of APTE whom they felt were unlikely to be manipulated into giving concessions and making private, inappropriate deals with Uniroyal Chemical. 

This conspiracy included local supportive politicians more focused on alleged future employment and taxes than on the immediate or long term health of individuals. Hence they too were all to willing to both support the chosen two as well as undermine any and all citizens who had strong opinions based upon deep and significant study of technical reports, attendance at public meetings and just plain common sense. This common sense included looking at the big picture and the immediate willingness of Uniroyal and their consultants to gild the lily, minimize the contamination and maximize the alleged benefits of consistently choosing the cheapest, least effective remediation methods. Some of us at least realized how blatant the obfuscation was and how unwilling the Ministry of Environment or any other authorities were to confront the company over their dishonesty regarding the cleanup. 

For the co-opted, confrontation is not good. They needed for their personal benefit to at least pretend that the polluter could be persuaded through communication and discussion. They needed to buttress the fantasy that the polluter via "moral suasion" was amenable to real public consultation when in fact the last thirty years of UPAC, CPAC, RAC & TAG has been simply window dressing and greenwashing. A couple of times when the public en masse has been sufficiently outraged they the public have pushed the company into doing a little more. The many good folks at UPAC, CPAC, TAG have not.  The in the know, self-serving folks, the polluter and local and provincial politicians have had their way. Both puffing up as well as behind the back smearing continue to this day. The difference between my criticism and theirs is that I do mine up front and put my name to it. I am neither anonymous nor yellow backstabbers like them.