POLLUTING CORPORATIONS ATTACK THEIR CRITICS

Today's Woolwich Observer carrys this story "Council denys bid to return Al Marshall to CPAC". This occurred last Tuesday evening in Woolwich Council Chambers in Elmira, Ontario. As the story indicates I was both nominated and strongly endorsed by the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee (CPAC) which is a committee of council. Four of the five CPAC members nominated me while the fifth, one Mark Bauman who is also a Woolwich Council member did not. Councillor Bauman then went to an in camera session of Woolwich Council (as well as likely before) to spread his misinformation. At the CPAC in camera session where I was lucky enough to be a fly on the wall, he also used the truth sparingly while embellishing with factually fictitous nonsense at will.

Councillor Bauman is the only surviving member from the last municipal council who were shown the door en masse at the last election. Mark represented St. Jacobs and thus was spared the wrath of the Elmira and rural voters of Woolwich. Councillor Bauman has a long history on the previous several councils which merely went through the motions with their CPAC committee. Chemtura and the Ministry of the environment regularily bragged about how good the old CPAC was. Talk about a dead giveaway that the committee were co-opted.

In the 60's Uniroyal (Chemtura's predecessor) had several employees on the old Elmira Council. That influence has become more subtle over the decades but nevertheless the company maintain a serious influence and political pull in Woolwich and especially Elmira. Some of it is benign such as financial donations to community events and sponserships of sports teams whereas some is less benign. They are a very wealthy and powerful multinational corporation and they have a vested interest in muting or at least minimizing the influence of their biggest critics. Here in town that would be me.