Dear Editor,
It is with considerable concern that I read the article “Creighton’s NWMO support over $550K” in the Dec. 10 edition of your newspaper.
As Ms. Cynthia Fedak indicates, money talks, and big money talks big, regardless of the place or time.
Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s tactics in Creighton mimic those they have used in every community they try courting as a host for their deep geological repository for nuclear waste.
Through a Freedom of Information request filed at Pinehouse, Saskatchewan, we at Briarpatch magazine learned that NWMO had pumped $471,000 (2010-2013) into the village accounts, which all sounds fine and good.
Except the documents we received in that case showed that the chair of NWMO’s Community Liaison Committee received a monthly salary of $5,441 to “learn more” and promote the nuclear waste business plan.
Also, two local Métis leaders got monthly salaries of $2,601 and $3,001 for the same purpose. Why?!
The Pinehouse local community visioning process (including a Northern Elders’ Gathering designed to feed into that process) was also funded big-time by NWMO, to the tune of at least $55,000. Why?!
Former chief Lawrence Joseph has been seen around the community canvassing for support for NWMO’s plans on First Nations territory. He is on NWMO’s payroll and he is trying to drive wedges of division into the Peter Ballantyne and Opaskwayak Cree Nation band councils, which have already passed strong resolutions against NWMO proposals. Why is Chief Joseph still there then?
NWMO denies they have any specific agenda in mind when they pour these amounts into a community. Hmmm! Makes you wonder.
When I attended the Nov. 20 Community Liaison Committee meeting in Creighton, the new committee chair reassured me that nothing of the sort is happening there.
Yet he admitted that his committee has never seen the financial statements for NWMO’s contributions to the town and cannot verify that in fact some people right in your midst are not getting paid to promote the nuclear waste agenda.
Time for some transparency and accountability? Oh, I should say so!
