To the editor,
News outlets have recently carried stories about monetary contributions from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to the Twp. of Ignace. One senses a constant excitement over the showy but practical assets purchased by the township with the funds.
The news just keeps coming. A pumper truck purchased by Ignace with NWMO’s contributed funds made a charming news story this past summer, but readers may not realize that by the end of 2022, the Twp. of Ignace had already been gifted almost $10 million by the NWMO.
These lavish contributions were not provided simply to compensate the township for consulting expenses related to the NWMO’s proposed project - a deep geological repository for highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste, 45 km west of town.
Such consultation costs certainly don’t approach $10 million. Conversely, many believe that the funds the NWMO injects into Ignace are intended to create a dependency and sense of obligation over time.
The NWMO has also given over $4 million to Dryden, and hefty funding to other northern communities - communities that may influence whether all of Canada’s accumulated nuclear fuel waste will be transported, at two or three truckloads a day for 50 years, buried, and abandoned in Northwestern Ontario.
In a recent NWONewswatch story, Ignace Mayor Kim Baigrie called the assets recently purchased with monetary contributions from the NWMO “key components of our community and our overall well-being.”
In a similar demonstration of dependency, a Dryden councillor recently wrote on social media that she would feel bad to “punish Dryden’s taxpayers” by opposing the project - or by advocating that Dryden walk away from its lucrative association with the NWMO.
Do any other dangerous industries ply communities with millions of dollars, in advance of those communities’ decisions on whether to admit them? There is an important distinction between the NWMO's seeming generosity and, say, a mining company donating to a library, or a forestry firm sponsoring a local hockey team.
Such companies - admittedly, in their own best interests - donate to be good neighbours since they are already in the community.
But the NWMO’s millions? They have a darker purpose: to influence a local decision that will have hundreds of thousands of years of implications, and one that will affect millions of Ontarians in this generation alone.
I believe this use of hydro ratepayers' money by the NWMO, to influence economically vulnerable communities to accept their dangerous project, is unethical. I hope readers will inform themselves, become involved and be vocal in this vital matter for Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario. The NWMO will make its siting decision this fall.
Wendy O'Connor
Murillo
