To the editor,
At first glance, the job posting for Communications Officer/Public Relations for the Municipality of South Bruce, makes it seem that town council and its administration are taking communications seriously.
That would be wrong.
The job, paying close to $70,000 a year, is not to manage municipal communications – things like public engagement on local issues, writing speeches for the mayor or helping citizens navigate their way through the maze of municipal bureaucracy. No, the job is to join the South Bruce Nuclear Exploration Project Team.
This position is funded by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) and reports to the NWMO-funded project manager. The municipality does provide them with desk space, a phone, a computer and, I suspect, taxpayer-funded coffee.
In the second paragraph of the job posting, the role becomes more apparent. “Be part of our nuclear team and play a critical role in the sharing of information with multiple stakeholders … and ensuring that the municipality produces clear, quality communications in a variety of formats.”
While this position does not report to anyone who works for the taxpayers, the job description highlights that they will have oversight responsibilities for the communications the municipality produces.
I believe the municipality has the nuclear waste propaganda team embedded in its operations. This team is bought and paid for with NWMO money. This relationship destroys the objectivity and neutrality of the municipality’s taxpayer-funded administration and its elected officials. The municipality places full pages ads in newspapers throughout the region extolling NWMO activities, along with its own. All of this, again, paid for with NWMO funds.
As Protect Our Waterways has experienced in each and every request for information and presentation to council, the collective response of our municipality’s leaders – elected and unelected – is best summed up as “your report is noted and filed” and “you shouldn’t be making any comments until all the science is in.”
Political science is in if South Bruce voters want their municipality to walk lockstep with NWMO, to the point of their funding communications staff, advertising, and approving the messages they publish … then that’s what we have. Our municipality does not have a Nuclear Exploration Project Team. It has a “we’re-all-in-for-nuclear-waste team.”
If you expect your municipal leaders to be neutral, then the communications staff of the municipality must be wholly funded by the taxpayer and report the CAO. It is fine for the municipality to accept NWMO money to fund peer-review studies of “the science” so long as the municipality is wholly in charge of what firms are awarded these contracts. Putting words in the mouths of the municipality’s management – and perhaps even our council members – is several steps too far.
The job posting demonstrates that the relationship between the municipality and the NWMO has become too cozy.
The job of welcoming applicants to “be a part of our nuclear team” demonstrates which team the municipality is truly playing for.
Hint: it is not the taxpayer’s team.
David Grant
Formosa
