Dear Editor:
Bruce County Council’s endorsement of the declaration of Global Partnership for Nuclear Communities of principles, based on membership in the Canadian Association of Nuclear Host Communities (CANHC), ought to raise alarm bells by any thinking regional citizen. Read for yourself the two documents behind this endorsement, which are publicly available in the online agenda of the County’s June 6th meeting.
CANHC, in collaboration with European and American nuclear community alliances, published a press release dated March 21, 2024 to announce this global partnership based on “supporting clean energy development in local communities” in accordance with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) approach to address climate change. The longstanding question to raise, of course, is whether nuclear energy can truthfully be characterized as clean and safe, when it produces radioactive waste.
Meanwhile, although I concede that Bruce County Council’s membership, as well as the Municipality of Kincardine, in the CANHC, is logical, given the longstanding presence of Bruce Power located in Kincardine, there is a huge problem – and I would call it misleading and even dishonest – for CANHC to include the Municipality of South Bruce as a `nuclear host community.’ The rationale, apparently, is because CANHC welcomes “current, future and interested nuclear host communities… in an ongoing proactive relationship with the Canadian nuclear industry and regulators.”
The biggest alarm bell here is triggered by what is written in the second document shown in the June 6th agenda, as a staff report titled: Engagement on Nuclear Energy Sector Projects” which reads: “Endorsing…helps establish expectations as the County is involved in the pre-planning and initial phases of the federal impact assessment processes on nuclear energy sector projects. Current initiatives related to the nuclear energy sector in the pre-planning stage of engagement in Bruce County include the NWMO Deep Geological Repository project [my bold]… .”
Upon watching the online June 6th Bruce County Council meeting, while Deputy Warden Luke Charbonneau championed the principles, in reference to “the multitude of [nuclear] projects we are privileged to have in our County,” Huron-Kinloss councillor Don Murray cautioned that “sometimes people feel we at County Council are trying to take over projects – not so.”
But, given the county council endorsement of the global declaration, Councillor Murray’s words ring hollow, when in referring to the proposed NWMO DGR as “in the pre-planning stage of engagement” gives the impression that the DGR will go forward.
What happened to the promise of a Referendum by-election vote, for the people who live in South Bruce, which is scheduled for late October this year? Does that actually mean nothing? Has this entire enterprise through the past dozen years been a fraudulent engagement in democracy, in which the people most predominantly impacted in so many ways actually will have no voice at all?
As a regional citizen who was a ratepayer in South Bruce for 13 years, the first problem which I observe is not so much the County taking over projects but, instead, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) taking over the Municipality of South Bruce. Any opposition to the proposed deep geological repository has continuously been marginalized by NWMO, with the complicity of South Bruce Council which has been enchanted by the vision of an economic boom, since it first became engaged in 2012 in the NWMO site selection process. I have witnessed it from that beginning.
Dialogue with the local community is a lie. NWMO only engages in one-sided forums of information, and never has been willing to sit in a town hall with voices who can communicate well-informed independent research which exposes the lack of science behind DGRs globally. Regional citizens are not being fully informed, because points of view which raise awkward questions are continuously discredited if not silenced entirely.
A lot of questions need to be asked, for which working journalists carry a responsibility. I am a former journalist who always dug for the deeper truth. I weep at the plight of journalism today. An important way for local journalism to regain trust from citizens is to ask difficult questions rather than merely repeat what politicians want us to hear.
-Dr. Sandy Greer, PhD, Blyth
