Questions are swirling around the proposal to build a garbage incinerator in the Pontiac.
Does it make sense to solve Pontiac’s 5,000-tonne garbage problem by importing another 395,000 tonnes?
What will the carbon emissions of 35 massive trucks driving into and out of the Pontiac every day amount to?
Why will a garbage incinerator here not have the same tendency as those elsewhere to emit dioxins above permitted levels?
Is locating an incinerator on the shores of the Ottawa River a good idea?
Why are no other jurisdictions within driving distance of the Pontiac interested in hosting a garbage incinerator, and what is it about the Pontiac that makes us susceptible to proposals nobody else wants?
How will turning the Pontiac into the garbage incinerating capital of the Ottawa Valley affect efforts to brand the area as a source of healthful food and outdoor activities in a beautiful natural environment?
But these are all questions that will be addressed in the business case that the energy-from-waste committee of the MRC has been tasked to generate, a feasibility study incorporating, as the warden has clarified, any environmental issues.
So, these are for another day. What we are asking today are questions of process.
What we are asking is why, when the public was brought in on this just a few weeks ago, it was announced that 18 mayors were already on board with the incinerator proposal?
A mayor’s support is not nothing. It represents endorsement at the highest level in a municipality, and can create a momentum that can be difficult for councillors to challenge, often leading to rapid passage of supportive resolutions at the council table, as seems to have happened in this case.
We are wondering where and when the matter has been debated by our policy-makers, our elected representatives, in a public forum?
To our knowledge, the answer is that it has not. Yet, somehow, decisions were taken on this public policy matter which has profound implications for the future of the Pontiac in all kinds of ways. When were they taken? Where were they taken? By whom and by what process?
Must we assume that this is just the latest example of an idea hatched behind closed-doors, out of public view, as is the practice in local government?
Making decisions in private that are then sprung on the public at a point when the train is well down the tracks, and it seems too late for anyone to make a meaningful intervention, is not democracy.
There appears to have been a full-court press over the past few months to ensure municipalities pass cookie-cutter resolutions supporting the proposal. This makes a mockery of the plan for the energy-from-waste committee to produce a feasibility study later this year.
The publication of the feasibility study should be the launch point of an informed public debate on the matter. Only then, should elected officials be asked to decide whether they support the proposal or not. The sequence is backwards, which suggests the group at the centre of the process might be better named the waste-of-energy committee.
We must all insist on transparent and accountable government at every level and on all issues, not just the few that occasionally bubble up because they are obviously of major concern, such as the proposal to build a garbage incinerator in the Pontiac. It should be a matter of course.
Charles Dickson
