The Council of Canadians Quill Plains chapter held a public forum on the uranium industry in Muenster, Saskatchewan on Nov. 7.
Chapter activists Elaine Hughes and Margaret Lewis tell us, “It didn’t take long for those attending D’Arcy Hande’s presentation, ‘Pinehouse: company town, Cameco town’ to start shaking their heads in disbelief as he gave an overview of how, over the last thirty years, the small northern Saskatchewan community of Pinehouse and its residents have come under the domination of the uranium industry.” Hande is a retired archivist and historian who has keenly followed the uranium industry’s activity in Saskatchewan. He is also a long-time opponent of the promotion of nuclear power as sustainable energy.
The panel also included Fred Pederson, resident of Pinehouse for forty-one years, a founding member of the Committee for Future Generations and a relentless critic of the uranium/nuclear industry, and John Smerek, Pinehouse businessman and anti-nuclear activist. The forum was moderated by Lewis.
Hughes and Lewis note, “Revealing the complicated twists and turns of a best-seller corporate thriller, D’Arcy, Fred and John explained how the community has been impacted by this industry – tales of closed-door meetings, lack of consultation with local Indigenous people, missing files, burned files, no files, million-dollar pays, exorbitant salaries for some, gag orders – it has it all.”
“Located 500 kilometres north of Saskatoon, Pinehouse Business North (2007), a publicly-owned corporation located in the northern Saskatchewan Village of Pinehouse, has evaded minimum legal standards of accountability. The inconsistencies and incongruities that Pinehouse officials have been permitted to trade in lieu of basic legal requirements for record keeping and public disclosure undermine the free exercise of democratic governance in Pinehouse and, by example, in all other local authorities in the province. After delving into the 100 per cent village-owned corporation’s financial status through several Freedom of Information requests, Briarpatch magazine has come to only a partial understanding of how dire PBN’s business had at times become.”
And they conclude, “But we do have a sufficient grasp of the situation to know that serious questions still need to be asked: questions about business practices, about leadership, about ethics. Why are they all so hard to answer?”
Further reading
Pinehouse Business North: Missing records, missing accountability (Nov. 24, 2015 Briarpatch article by Hande)
Council of Canadians supports the “Declaration of the World Uranium Symposium” (April 23, 2015)
‘Collaboration Agreement’ with uranium giants sparks opposition in northern Saskatchewan (Dec. 3, 2012 blog)
Photo: On Nov. 7, the Quill Plains chapter held a public forum on the uranium industry in Saskatchewan.
