Editor’s note: The following is an open letter to South Bruce council and CAO Leanne Martin.
At the council meeting of Jan. 11, council requested that Protect Our Waterways (POW) allow its 1,258-signature petition to be submitted to council in a fashion that allowed it to be public document rather than treated confidentially, as we originally requested. The petition was for a referendum on community willingness to host the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO) deep geological repository (DGR) to be held in association with the 2022 municipal election.
Our reasons for requesting that the list of petition signers be kept confidential is community safety. As you and all members of council are aware, some people opposed to POW’s opposition to the DGR and our referendum campaign have damaged the property of supporters and not only written graffiti on signage, but also destroyed signs with chainsaws. Yet, despite all the negative attention, by Jan. 11, 1,258 residents had signed the petition and that number continues to grow.
Some of the people who signed our petition are so fearful of being publicly identified that rather than dropping the postage-paid petition card in the mail, they enclosed their signed petitions in envelopes and mailed them back using their own stamps. Indeed, one of driving reasons for many of the residents who signed the petition was that the privacy of a municipal voting booth is the only place they feel they can give their opinion on whether to host the DGR, without fear of retribution.
Mayor Robert Buckle and other councillors have spoken about the division in our community. We believe that the publication of the petition list risks exacerbating it. As responsible citizens, we cannot be party to this. So instead, we offer this suggestion: we propose that a member of council review the petition list that you currently have on hand. That member of council can inspect the names and their veracity, as well as the statements of our independent scrutineers.
We further invite that assigned member of council to contact the scrutineers to verify their statements. If the goal of the municipal council is to ensure that the 1,258 petitioners are residents of South Bruce and did indeed sign the petition, then this suggestion will achieve that goal.
Council cannot reasonably ignore the fact that the community is divided on the issue of hosting the DGR. Indeed, one of the primary reasons that the petition number is so large and continues to grow is that our community wants the DGR hosting issue settled as soon as possible. This is despite the fact that the Willing to Listen group has urged people to not sign the petition (Letter to the editor: Do not sign – Nov. 4, 2021).
The 2022 municipal election period is the best time to settle the issue. To continue to prolong the debate will only further divide the community. Council has the opportunity to let the people vote their conscience, in private, and allow the municipality to be secure in its deliberations with the NWMO that it either has the support of its residents, or not.
The residents of South Bruce do not need more studies to inform them. They need the date, time, and place to inform the municipality what decision it should make.
Signed,
The Directors of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste
