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Save Picton Bay has deputation cut short at council meeting

The Save Picton Bay Group (SPBG) has been left scratching its head after member Brian Etherington’s deputation to council on July 23 was abruptly cut short with “unparliamentary language” cited as the reason. The SPBG group was baffled by this and had to comb through the testimony to find out what they had said. From the transcripts, it was revealed the acting CAO Robert McAuley had taken issue with some words that he called “problematic in the context of procedural bylaws”. The words used that McAuley took issue with were “aggressive” and “illegally constituted” and he explains below.

“The statement ‘Illegally constituted’ would not be permitted in your procedural bylaw. That’s an opinion. The word ‘aggressive’ is considered undemocratic in constitutional or procedural bylaw,” said McAuley.

David Sutherland from the SPBG was present at the deputation and is still confused with what transpired.

“McAuley also took issue with the SPBG disclosing the fact that the group was in preliminary discussions with the County and Picton Terminals to potentially settle all lawsuits, which McAuley claimed was privileged information. I guess they may be bound not to talk about it, but we are party and can discuss it if we like. Our laywers didn’t see any problems with us raising that point. McAuley did. I don’t see what his motivations are for doing this,” says Suthlerland.

The purpose of SPBG’s deputation was to ask council to direct its legal team to take an official stance of ‘no position,’ which they are allowed to do on the appeal. Last year, the group challenged the municipality’s past zoning bylaw to see if the shipping port could continue operating under the County’s current bylaw. Both Picton Terminals and the municipality stated the zoning is correct as legal, non-conforming use. Last June, Justice Wolf Tausendfreund made a decision which stated the general historic use of Picton Terminals has not changed from the ’50s to the present.

“We don’t want to be fighting two adversaries on this. Picton Terminals has a stake. It is unclear to us why the County needs to be involved with this. They can take this ‘no position’ stance legitimately and just stand back, because I can’t imagine why they care how this comes out,” says Sutherland.

The 11-page deputation gives a brief history of the SPBG before going right into the heart of the matter.

“Our mutual concerns are much larger than Picton Terminals, but clearly as a result of their self-demonstrated capabilities, job number 1 is proper rezoning and regulatory control assurances in order to guarantee that one day the sum of recent ‘smaller’ issues do not add up to an enormous environmental disaster to the detriment of all who are privileged to work and play in the Bay,” the July 23 deputation says in part.

The document then proceeded to highlight the litany of smaller issues Picton Terminals has had in the past including the March 27 barge sinking that resulted in the closing of Picton’s drinking water system, the subsequent loss of tourism dollars because of the water emergency, the petcoke spill and the continuous salt runoff leaching into the Bay. It also mentions that SPBG have long been working with the Provincial and Federal Government regulators, but urged the past council to withdraw its original support of Picton Terminals’ plan to turn Picton harbour into a Great Lakes Shipping port by addressing a re-zoning of its land-use activities—the one area where council has jurisdiction. The council turned down the request to withdraw backing of Picton Terminals’ plan, which meant that SPBG was effectively going to have to do council’s job by asking an Ontario Superior Court Judge to interpret the land usage zoning bylaws and find out which ones Picton Terminals was relying on to continue their shipping operations.

Before getting cut off, the deputation also took time to explain some recent actions taken by SPBG that may have ruffled some feathers around the horseshoe.

“Feeling abandoned by our democratically elected representatives, SPB exercised its legal right as a public litigant in filing an application for a Bad Faith Judgement against PEC Council and its legal counsel in the belief that Council in taking these measures was unaware of both the legal implications and possible impact upon our Appeal.”

Etherington also said the most recent Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks directors letter of June 14, 2019 states “the Ministry’s concern is the continued and ongoing discharge of contaminants to the natural environment.”