Let's call a spade, a spade....

"The Environmental Assessment process is broken"

Generally speaking, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) panders to wasteful, incompetent or (in some cases) corrupt politicians and municipal bureaucrats, working hand-in-glove with avaricious consulting engineers ...wasting billions of dollars.

The MOE says that the Environmental Assessment (EA) process is "proponent driven and self assessing". It doesn't work!

The MOE fails citizens miserably by failing to adhere to, or police, its own Ontario Environmental Assessment Act:

Stated Purpose of the Act:

“…the betterment of the people of the whole or part of Ontario by providing for the protection, conservation and wise management in Ontario of the environment.” (Part I - Section 2)

(“Environment includes the natural, social, cultural, built and economic environments.”)

EA Process:

“To provide clear and complete documentation of the planning process followed, to allow traceability of decision making with respect to the project”

Section A.2.1:

“To ensure that the planning and design process is easily traceable, the proponent shall ensure that:

·         the analysis is understandable to the reasonable lay observer;

·         all conclusions drawn from the analysis follow logically from the information gathered and presented; and,

·         a reasonable lay observer is able to replicate the conclusion based on the information presented.”

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The city’s discharge of the EA process regarding the Munster wastewater issue has NOT been traceable or understandable to the reasonable lay observer, nor has the lay observer been able to draw the city’s stated conclusions from analysis of the information presented, nor have lay observers been able to replicate the city’s conclusions on the basis of the information the city has presented.

Therefore, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment would be negligent if it were to grant the city a Certificate of Approval (C of A) for a forcemain, on the basis of the seriously flawed, deficient and untraceable information so far presented.

This would be costly proof to residents of Ottawa (and Richmond in particular) ---similar to what previously occurred in Walkerton--- that their municipal and provincial health and safety support systems have failed to perform ...again.