TSC chair asks where is Ontario's concern with MNR?

Open Letter from Gaye Smith
Chairman Temagami Stewardship Council

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I traveled 5 hours to a public meeting in Temagami last spring to listen to an MNR presentation on Proposed Fishing Regulations. The Arena hall was full with more than 1/2 the town’s population. There were similar meetings held across Northeastern Ontario were local residents turned out in droves to express their concern about regulations advanced by the MNR. At the meeting in Kirkland Lake the Mayor threatened civil disobedience in opposing proposed regulations.

I have listened to members of the Nipissing Stewardship Council who talked about arm twisting and pressure by the MNR to change their Stewardship to a perceived MNR “model” and rather than change they quit. I have listened to members of the 805 Advisory Council who felt they were left high and dry and their recommendations ignored by the same MNR. Then there was the Temagami SFL were the Municipality of Temagami, the Bear Island Band and the lumber companies had agreed to an innovative lumber licensing model only to have the model which does have precedent in the Muskoka, Westwind turned down by the MNR.

We have all experienced the “locked doors” on the MNR offices and the phone answering system that now defers you to Peterborough. The lack of enforcement by conservation officers who do not have gas to run their trucks and are now to remain at their desks and rely on “ the Tips line.”

Why then with all this unrest in Northern Ontario about the MNR has there been little or no reference to the situation in this election? The politicians are the ones who are ultimately responsible and your views expressed at public meetings can and have been ignored. An election provides the opportunity to tell the politicians that we do not agree with what they are doing or in this case not doing.

Gaye Smith

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