EDITORIAL – Public comments end; we’ve had every chance to vent on Ajax
Last year’s public meeting on initial report on Ajax commissioned by City. (Image: CFJC)
An Armchair Mayor editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
THE PUBLIC COMMENT period — the latest and last public comment period — on Ajax quietly came to an end at midnight last night.
More than 600 comments were submitted to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office website.
That’s a lot of comments. Unfortunately, very, very few of them will add anything to the information needed for the provincial and federal governments to make a decision.
The comment period ran for two months, and it was supposed to be about what people think of the joint federal-provincial report summarizing the pros and cons of the project.
Almost everyone ignored that fact.
Mel Rothenburger’s Armchair Mayor editorials appear twice daily Mondays through Thursdays on CFJC- TV. His Armchair Mayor column is published Saturdays on ArmchairMayor.ca and CFJC Today. Contact him at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Mel,
Some of us believe the decision was made a long time ago and all of this posturing has served only as a smoke screen.
It will be interesting to see what takes place with our First Nations people and yet another European entity albeit this event is in somewhat of a time lag.
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Judging from the response by the company and government regarding the initial flawed proposal, which resulted in the company getting a second chance, it doesn’t matter whether people have any substantive comments on the revised proposal or not. The project should have been rejected in the first go-round, when the company admitted that it would release toxins into the air and water exceeding provincial or federal guidelines and/or regulations. Instead of requiring the company to revise its process so that its pollution would stay within legal allowances, the government has seemingly allowed the company to simply tack on the phrase, “or reasonable science-based benchmarks,” which appears to be a term coined and used by the BC government to excuse intent to pollute above currently acceptable levels. When this kind of sophistry is condoned by government, what chance does the public have to safeguard its health and safety? The process is a sham.
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