Charles Dickson, LJI Reporter

All 18 mayors at last week’s meeting of Pontiac county council supported a motion to discuss the possibility of opening their monthly plenary session to the public.
The motion, brought forward by Shawville mayor Bill McCleary, proposed that “discussions of this issue be conducted over the next few weeks for a final vote at the next public sitting” of the council.
In its preamble, McCleary’s resolution made reference to an informal survey of MRC Pontiac mayors conducted by “local media”. The survey, conducted by THE EQUITY in November of last year, found an approximate three-way split among the 18 mayors on the question of public attendance at the monthly plenary, with five mayors supportive, five opposed, six undecided, one open to a discussion on the matter and another undeclared (Public access to plenary discussions? THE EQUITY, Nov. 15, 2023).
Important to both supportive and undecided mayors alike was the need to retain the option to hold a portion of the meeting in-camera for discussion of such issues as human resources, proprietary matters relating to contracts, and security questions.

Garbage incinerator

Judy Spence, spokesperson for local advocacy group Citizens of the Pontiac, asked whether any of the mayors might put forward a motion to put the incinerator matter on hold “so that there can be more reflection on what options are out there, and basically hearing from the public.”
“There are so many waste management options other than burning,” Spence said, a point which Warden Toller quickly picked up on, saying, “We’re actually working in the CPO, which is the five regions of the Outaouais, on a garbage solution, because we’re all in the same boat. We’re all starting our recycling and our composting, but we’re all concerned about the residual waste which is currently going to landfill. Will it continue to go to landfill?”

As the discussion continued, the audio recording was intermittent, though it seems there was a exchange over how much of the MRC’s $1.7 million in costs associated with disposing of our 5,000 tons of garbage in landfill could be saved by removing wastes through recycling and composting.
Christine Anderson of the citizens’ group Friends of the Pontiac asked when the business plan being developed by Deloitte and Ramboll will be made public.

“The initial plan which is in draft form right now, is going to be presented to a working session of the mayors on Feb. 27 – we will be voting on it in the month of March,” responded Warden Toller.
“The next step that’s being proposed, or suggested by the consultants, would be to do a more extensive business plan which would answer many questions that still are not answered,” said the warden. She added that she expects other municipalities would help cover the costs. “We think that this plan, which would depend on waste coming from other municipalities as well, that they should put some funds into it.“
Anderson also asked about the protocol of sharing key points from the draft business plan with Renfrew County mayors before the Pontiac mayors had seen it.

As reported in THE EQUITY’s report on the warden’s presentation to Renfrew County Council (Warden Toller pitches Pontiac incinerator to Renfrew County, THE EQUITY, Feb. 14, 2024), the warden introduced what she referred to as “an initial business plan” and what she called “key findings.”

Incinerator questions at MRC meeting

In her presentation to Renfrew County Mayors in late January, Warden Toller said, “MRC Pontiac has completed an initial business plan with Deloitte and Ramboll from Denmark evaluating various technologies, looking at business models, partnerships, quantifying tonnages, travel distances, tipping fees, price of electricity production and funding. The results are in draft form and will be shared when finalized. Key findings: excellent and clean technologies are available; 25/75 private-public partnership is the best option; a 300-ton facility could suffice (with new tonnage information), DBOM, as Deloitte calls it, is the best plan, where we have a company, for example, Covanta, design, build, operate and maintain; . . . the last finding: it is very competitive with the current tipping fees that are being paid for landfill, and the distances are all reasonable for all of these regions coming to the Pontiac, the Pontiac is in the centre.”

At last Wednesday evening’s meeting, in response to Anderson’s question about sharing the draft report with Renfrew County mayors, Toller said that she didn’t know at the time that she was being recorded.
“I watched myself too, just to see what it is that I had said, because I didn’t know I was being recorded [on video] . . . and I was kind of relieved that I said only what I said.” Toller said that when she made the presentation, she hadn’t yet seen the business plan and described what she called “key findings” as points she had been including in her presentations since last summer.

“When we received the draft business plan, I had not looked at the draft business plan, and I certainly had not looked at the presentation that they had given us. I looked at that after I had been to Renfrew. So, my key findings were simply things I had already discussed with the mayors, and many of those things I had already discussed publicly, such as mass combustion is the best technology, out of the choice of pyrolysis and gasification. Another key finding that the distances all made sense. So, I wasn’t revealing anything confidential from our business plan. And when you see the business plan, which will be made public, you will see that it is very different from what I gave. My presentation was the exact presentation from July, and was my sort of ‘set’ presentation,” she said.