SIOUX LOOKOUT – Readers – Open letter to Greg Rickford, MP for Kenora Rainy River: The Experimental Lakes Area has received and generated extraordinary and passionate local, national and global concern but you have ignored it.
You broke a promise to me and my granddaughter to set up a meeting to discuss the killing of the ELA and the Harper government’s gutting of Canada’s environmental legislation and protections.
You sent out invitations to attend an open house at your Dryden constituency office. My granddaughter and I travelled to Dryden since no open house was scheduled for Sioux Lookout.
When we entered the office you turned us away, refusing to discuss our concerns, saying you had a conflicting event at the office.
You told us to book an appointment with your regional operations manager who took my name and phone number and said she would contact me about scheduling a meeting in Sioux Lookout with a delegation to discuss concerns about the ELA.
Next I pressed for a January meeting; she said it wasn’t possible.
I suggested February and was told that I would be contacted with a time and date. Clearly the meeting needed to be scheduled prior to the closing of the ELA but no response was ever received and March 31, the date of the closure, came without any attempt by your office to arrange the promised meeting.
Twice in media interviews you have characterized people in your riding who express their concerns on this issue as “mean spirited.” You have kept yourself inaccessible to constituents on the subject of the ELA and environmental concerns. Many attempts have been made by the ELA coalition and community members to arrange a meeting with you but to no avail.
What you have demonstrated is that your leadership and this government is being fundamentally dishonest and predatory concerning the hope, future and legacy of our grandchildren.
Since you are hiding from your constituents on this matter, we all need to have a public discussion about the direction of your government and the changes we collectively need to make in order to ensure a sustainable future for this country’s children and their children.
Following that, we need to discuss the role that the Canadian people wish to play in the global community, beyond our selfish and privileged needs and disproportionate wealth.
I am raising an alarm bell and ask all parents and grandparents to join this discussion though all forms of media and let the autocracy know what is and is not acceptable to the people of this riding, this country and to the global community.
Gregory Hlady
Sioux Lookout
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