MINUTES FROM THE SEPTEMBER 24/15 TAG MEETING

TAG stands for Technical Advisory Group. It does not stand for Truth Avoidance Group as is the intent of our local politicians (most not all) and world class polluters. There are I hope and believe a few good persons on TAG who will resist that. The problem is that they are grossly subservient to RAC which stands for Remediation Advisory Group which combined with TAG produces the Really Awful Chemtura Truth Avoidance Groups. RAC are the big problem. They are a bunch of political hacks appointed by other political hacks to the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) who view their purpose as putting a green spin on development in the watershed. Don't get me wrong here. Not all GRCA employees are ill intentioned. Many believe in what they are doing and planting trees, studying phragmites, emerald ash borer and purple loosestrife are all admirable and worthwhile activities. Regarding the voting members tell me how a bunch of self serving municipal politicians can possibly be transformed into doing the best for the citizens simply by being appointed to the GRCA? Former mayor Todd Cowan was a member as is current mayor Sandy Shantz. He lied to the GRCA stating that CPAC had no objections to Chemtura's alleged remediation of GP1 & 2 on their south-east corner in 2012. Mayor Shantz immediately upon becoming mayor jumped into bed with Chemtura and the Ontario M.O.E. and attacked CPAC's credibility, competence and integrity. She then replaced them with her curling buddies and much worse.

Page 2 of the Minutes states that "...TAG members indicated that they had no pecuniary interests to declare and therefore that no conflicts of interest exist.". This is false. Their lack of a declaration simply means that there are at least two liars on TAG.

Page 3 speaks to Chemtura's discredited by CPAC and MTE east side work plan. Allegedly the analytical data from the soil samples is available by now yet no sign of it being released publicly. The original plan called for Chemtura's usual horse manure sampling methods; namely avoid at all costs actually sampling where it needs to be done and if there is no other choice then collect composite samples from numerous locations and dilute the really bad ones with less contaminated areas.

The method of written public input to TAG stated on page 4 is unacceptable and frankly insulting. We are advised that a "technically sound" one page document to the Chair for his sole discretion as to pass it along or not is the only acceptable method. The former CPAC has extraordinarily qualified technical persons on it and yours truly as well has been submitting "technically sound" documents to the M.O.E., Uniroyal/Chemtura and local governments for 25 years plus.

Seriously Mr. Jackson if TAG is not allowed to accept in person Delegations then at least have a sensible and reasonable process by which the informed and honest public can submit written documentation.

MEETING OF THE MAYOR'S CURLING BUDDIES, CAMPAIGN SUPPORTERS & OTHER CHAIR WARMERS ie. TAG

The absolute truth regarding TAG is both better and worse than the above title indicates. They are scheduled to meet next Thursday November 5, 2015 at 6:30 pm. in Council Chambers. There are two technically competent individuals namely the Chair Dick Jackson and I believe Mr. Hofbauer is a hydrogeologist. Sebastian Seibel-Achenbach is currently in France but is a proven, honest voice. The rest are the mayor's buds including a proven pair of manipulative individuals with gross conflicts of interest.

Being a bud of the mayor is not an absolute dealbreaker. She has long practiced the politician's art of smiling and getting along with the voters. I like many others was fooled for years. It is simply interesting that she got rid of the best CPAC there had ever been simply to replace them with campaign supporters, acolytes and curling buddies. Kind of tells you exactly how much serious effort she really wants from TAG ie. zero.

Speaking of gross conflicts of interest as well as hypocrisy, I notice that all the Township meetings speak to 1. Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest rather than Disclosures of Conflict of Interest. Is this how two Tag members, MECAC (Compliance Audit Committee) and RAC members soothe their consciences? Three MECAC members at a minimum had no business making decisions, regarding mayor and regional councillor Shantz, yet they all claimed they had no Pecuniary Interests.

Appointees to boards, commissions and committees of councils are rarely the best qualified. They are political friends of friends. They can also be patronage appointments ie. payoffs for past favours with hopes for future favours. This once again is Canadian style corruption at which Woolwich Township flourishes.

MECAC STUNG BY PUBLIC INPUT, WOOLWICH OBSERVER IGNORE SAME

Monday morning, as I have already posted here, MECAC took a thumping from involved Woolwich citizens. While perhaps Rich Clausi and I hit them the hardest, Lisa MacDonald, on behalf of Dr. Dan Holt did considerable damage to their image and reputation as well. Dr. Dan was attending a medical procedure but provided Lisa with a written document asserting that MECAC have been usurping the courts authority by refusing to send cases along to the courts for their review and possible charges. A fourth citizen also spoke although she referred in more general terms to issues such as everyone needs to follow the rules (election act).

CKCO-TV, K-W Record and the Observer all attended on Monday in Woolwich Council Chambers. The K-W Record also attended yesterday at Provincial Offences Court where I chatted with reporter Paige Desmond. She has another article in today's paper. I have also been advised this morning by the Woolwich Observer that they had a reporter present in court yesterday.

Today's front page article in the Observer is best described as yellow journalism. Steve Kannon quotes five MECAC members' critical comments towards myself but zero of the comments from the previous four involved citizens. As I said: yellow journalism. I am very disappointed in Steve Kannon especially as I have expressed my respect for his overall stand regarding both past and present Woolwich councils as well as his world view of politics, corruption etc..Many of MECAC's comments are just outrageous especially the ones dealing with "minor mistakes". Any suggestion that Mayor Shantz's mistakes were minor in her original filing for the March 27/15 deadline only come from biased and or incompetent persons. She fudged both the Income (Donations) and the Expense side of her Financial Statements by thousands of dollars in order to keep her totals below the magic $10,000 threshold requiring an audit. Anybody can look at the Woolwich Township website under municipal election 2014 and read these numbers for themselves. Those errors are serious but many more have since been discovered, some serious, some less so. All are legal contraventions and I give the K-W Record credit in that they carefully include in each of their articles the ones that Mayor Shantz has admitted to so far.

My hope and expectation is that MECAC will be publicly humiliated via the Provincial Offences Court process. Yes to date the prosecuter has not seriously reviewed the case and decided whether or not the Crown wish to carry it forward or not. Regardless MECAC gave the mayor a clean slate back on July 2/15 only to have her removed from office six days later courtesy of the Municipal Elections Act (MEA). Contrary to Paige Desmond's statement in today's Record she was not removed for admitting her contraventions plural but for one MAJOR contravention namely failing to file an audit. That is an automatic forfeiture and yours truly had to pressure the Woolwich Clerk in order to get her to do her duty, namely issuing the Notice of Breach which precedes the removal from office.

If these charges go forward, the Mayor already has either implicitly or tacitly admitted to about six of them. They have all been listed here in the Advocate previously. These are serious and the Woolwich Observer are doing the public no service by pretending otherwise. While nothing is guaranteed it is quite possible that both MECAC and the Observer may be dining on crow down the road.

PROVINCIAL OFFENCES COURT THIS MORNING

Well I am slowly beginning to think that perhaps our judicial system is going to positively surprise me. I know, I know, deep down, somehow, despite everything I've seen and heard, at heart I'm a silly optimist. There I said it!

I met and spoke with the prosecuter, Mr. Alex Andres, briefly prior to court. He had just finished having a chat with mayor Shantz's lawyer, one Randall Martin. Mr. Andres explained to me what was to happen this morning and indeed court did follow as he had explained. I was called to the front in order to identify myself to the judge as the complainant. Also I advised Mr. Andres in front of the judge that Wednesday December 2, 2015 at 9 am. in Provincial Offences Court was fine with me as well.

Mr. Andres advised the judge that the adjournement was necessary in order to determine if the Crown wished to pick up the case and proceed with its' prosecution. Also Mr. Andres used a legal term I have not heard before and to my ears it sounded like "chatecum". Quite frankly I am guessing at the spelling and even at the overall word. A friend with me in court suggested that she thought the word was in reference to whether or not Provincial Offences Court was the best location for all the charges. Now my friend while not a lawyer nevertheless has more on the ball legally than I and she thought it might be referring to a couple of the charges perhaps needing to be heard in criminal court. As you can tell this is all Greek to me.

The good news is that if the Crown decide to go with this then for the first time we will have professional authorities, without an axe to grind, actually seriously looking at the merits of the case. Afterall they need to know prior to trial whether there is a reasonable prospect for conviction. To that end Mr. Andres advised me privately that he and I will need to have further discussion regarding all the evidence currently available.

I WILL BE POSTING TODAY AFTER THE 9 AM. PROVINCIAL COURT APPEARANCE REGARDING TEN ELECTION ACT CHARGES

MECAC NEED TO RESIGN FORTHWITH

MECAC Chair Carl Zehr is a piece of very bad work. The fact that he managed to last as a local politician for so long in Kitchener indicates to me that slimy and scheming apparently works well. As MECAC Chair he has presided over three absolutely horrible meetings in Woolwich Township in which politics and deception triumphed over transparency, accountability and honesty. He professed great umbrage with comments from Lisa MacDonald, Richard Clausi and myself which could have been inferred to be questioning both his and MECAC's integrity. The fourth speaker while speaking to following the rules etc. was less harsh in her take on MECAC.

It's all about manipulation. This is how "good" politicians take meetings in the direction they want. If they hit resistance from one speaker then as they have control of the agenda and process they simply move on. If one party or Delegate at the meeting either states a very embarassing fact or asks a difficult question then they ignore it. Over the course of a meeting there is so much said and so many highlights it is impossible for everything to be remembered by the public except the items which took up most of the time.

Of great interest to me yesterday was the alleged "urgent matter" that kept one of the MECAC members from attending. This "urgent matter" was most likely their conflict of interest in making decisions regarding mayor Shantz. I actually give them credit for not attending. Chair Carl Zehr through his link to Metrolinx (Board of Governers) is in a similar conflict of interest position but attended anyways in order to ensure that Sandy did not have a Compliance Audit ordered.

While my Delegation was powerful and highly critical of the MECAC process, Richard Clausi really put it to MECAC. He described the "trickery" that has been underway throughout the process both from MECAC, mayor Shantz and Woolwich Council. This included the mayor "ambushing" myself and maybe MECAC with 30 pages of documents on July 2/15, ten minutes before the meeting. It included no counterpoint evidence or position from Woolwich Township at Superior Court both for Councillor Bauman and mayor Shantz. Also MECAC's flimsy excuses in not sending the Councillor Hahn case on to a prosecuter including their prejudging the judicial system's possible non conviction and using that as an excuse not to send him on. Sandy's admitted submission of a sworn untrue statement to Superior Court has not been followed up by any authorities. Finally the acceptance for convenience of late and legally unacceptable Financial Statements by Woolwich Township, MECAC and even Superior Court.

Yesterday's improper decision contrary to case law and evidence submitted to MECAC was totally expected. A leopard does not change its' spots. Richard at the end of his Delegation worded it nicely and suggested that MECAC if they knew they had failed badly should do the honourable thing by resigning. Obviously doing the honourable thing is not a high priority for MECAC.

MECAC: APOLOGISTS FOR LAW BREAKING POLITICIANS

Well things went precisely as expected this morning. Of interest was Chairman Carl Zehr making it clear that MECAC asked for a Legal Opinion from none other than the Township's lawfirm (Smith Valeriote). They of course take their directions and instructions from ...Mayor Shantz and Council. Therefore the adjudicaters (MECAC) at today's hearing took legal advice from one of the parties (Mayor Shantz) advising them as to what their mandate and jurisdiction is. If you think that that is both ridiculous and a gross conflict of interest, then indeed you are right and MECAC wrong yet again.

MECAC yet again blabbed on ad infinitum about rectifying her mistakes, no new information presented, no criminal activity etc. by the mayor and a host of other totally irrelevant excuses. They as the title above indicate are nothing but apologists for our local law breaking politicians. MECAC are themselves breaking the law by their intentionally refusing to abide by case law which indicates the extremely low threshold for ordering a Compliance Audit and which also states they have but minimal discretion to refuse an Application for a Compliance Audit.

Mayor Shantz betrayed her nature with her personal attack upon myself. I did not in my Delegation make any personal comments about her integrity and in fact I focused on MECAC and their failures to date to uphold the Municipal Elections Act. The mayor ridiculously dredged up irrelevant and false information even from twenty years ago while accusing me of having a personal agenda. Wow is she ever upset with ancient, irrelevant history. Odd isn't it that she didn't mention my support of her during the election campaign over a year ago? Also odd that neither her or MECAC want to clarify her untrue, sworn statement she submitted to Superior Court for their July 23/15 court date.

As Richard Clausi advised me afterwards if anybody wants to break the law then be sure to have MECAC on the jury because everything is forgiveable. That's fine when all the facts are presented with due process in a court of law but that is exactly what MECAC, the Township and the mayor are desperate to avoid. I also mentioned the significance of the March 23/15 date (4 days prior to the filing deadline) on the mayor's second Financial Statement but no one on MECAC or the mayor cared to answer or respond to it.