DEFLECTING THE AGENT ORANGE ISSUE IN ONTARIO

While the Fact-Finding Panel on Herbicide 2,4,5-T here in Ontario is better than nothing, that's about it. Their mandate was set by the Ontario government and it was set far too narrowly. While the health issue certainly is very important; an attempt to quantify it decades after the fact and based upon incomplete records, anecdotal evidence etc. can only accomplish so much. That said I have found some of the more factual parts of their report to date, very interesting.

What I am having trouble with is the alleged inability to indicate who manufactured the Agent Orange and what health guarantees or studies preceded it. It is one very bad thing to be dousing civilains halfway around the world with these chemicals during a wartime situation but it's another whole kind of worse to be dousing civilains whether employees or simply nearby residents with these chemicals simply to make more profits for the forestry industry. Similarily use along Hydro transmission lines, railroad tracks and highways boggles the mind. By the mid 60s there was growing evidence of the harm these herbicides were doing to Vietnamese civilians. Why were our provincial government still spraying here up until 1979? Was our government being lobbied by the chemical industry to keep things going?

I think that a judicial inquiry is what is needed. The public have a right to know who profited directly from the continued use of Agent Orange in Ontario. The public have a right to know what influence the chemical industry had in Ontario that they could peddle their toxic and poisonous products here. Is it simply that private profits carry that much more sway than public health?