Whilst I applaud Mayor Haswell's
efforts to get all sides talking about the recent fishing agreement
with the Saugeen Ojibway Nation it is clear that such discussions
should have taken place before the agreement was put in place. That
it did not is clearly the fault of the MNR, working in secrecy seems
to be the new normal for all levels of government in Canada!.
Mayor Haswell has said that folks
should read the agreement before jumping to conclusions as to how it
affects the commercial and sports fishery, easy to say but very hard
to do! When this agreement was announced I tried to do just that, no
reference to said agreement could be found on the MNR site let alone
the actual text, a second search today came up empty also, it could be there but if so is well hidden. No news
stories that I have read provide a link to such a document and
several make a point of saying that it was not generally available at
the time of publication, it hard to read an agreement that is not
generally available to the public.
I believe much of the concern about
this issue could have been avoided by a more open and public process
and that any future news stories should provide a link to the
document (if indeed it is available online anywhere)
I would be pleased to post such a link
here if someone can provide it, lets all base our opinions on facts
not speculation and could someone with clout get the MNR to smarten up
and provide easy access to such documents!
No comments:
Post a Comment