I was very fortunate this morning to fly up from Toronto with Elizabeth May, for whom I have a great deal of respect and with whom I worked very closely in the eighties. I'm just devastated for the people of Cape Breton. I would like to quote Elizabeth May that...when she says the latest proposal to sprinkle fairy dust or cement on top of the tar ponds means they're going to rely on unproven technology that poses a risk to the public's health: “Even if it works, we're building a concrete sarcophagus in the middle of Sydney that will forever hold the risk of leeching toxic waste. It's not a cleanup, it's a cover-up.”
I agree with Elizabeth May. I can tell you that there are so many hot spots of PCBs in the Sydney tar ponds that....
You cannot put PCBs in a landfill if they have more than 50 parts per million. There are spots that have 1,000 ppm of PCBs in the tar ponds, yet Environment Canada came in and dodged, and weaved, and could never really answer the question, but told the full panel review that they thought they could sprinkle cement over the tar ponds and create a sarcophagus.
I think what's happening down there is very short-sighted. To think that we've spent probably almost a billion dollars in 25 years....
I started working for a Nova Scotian MP in 1980, and this was on the agenda in 1980.