Premier Kathleen Wynne says she never received Grassy Narrows mercury report
A visibly displeased Wynne said the report disclosed by the Star last Saturday was “new to me” and is a clarion call to further action beyond the $85 million cleanup of the Wabigoon River.
Premier Kathleen Wynne insists she was in the dark about a report given to the Ministry of the Environment in July 2016 that revealed mercury could be seen in the soil under the mill upstream from Grassy Narrows First Nation.
A visibly displeased Wynne said the report disclosed by the Star last Saturday was “new to me” and is a clarion call to further action beyond the $85 million cleanup of the Wabigoon River.
“The specifics of this latest report are new information for me,” the premier told reporters Wednesday after a United Way of Greater Toronto event.
Asked why it was left to the Star to reveal what had been known inside the provincial government for more than a year, Wynne did not mince words.
“We’re asking those questions. We are not sure exactly … how that information hadn’t made it to my desk, but we’re asking that question,” she said.
“It is always a concern if we don’t have the information that we need to make good decisions. We have questions.”
The Star recently reported that the government has had an explosive report in its possession for over a year. The report, which was commissioned by Domtar, the company that now owns the mill, says that in 1990 the environment ministry was told that mercury was visible in soil under a building on the mill site.
Further, companies that previously owned the mill tested groundwater wells on the property in the 1990s and early 2000s and discovered elevated levels of mercury. Just last year, Domtar had one of these wells tested and the result showed an elevated mercury level. (There is no suggestion that Domtar, a pulp manufacturer several owners removed from Reed Paper, is responsible for any source of mercury.)
The people of Grassy Narrows say they weren’t told about any of this information until days ago.
Wynne emphasized that her government is taking seriously the contamination from a mill — then owned by Reed Paper — that dumped 10 tonnes of mercury into the Wabigoon between 1962 and 1970.
“When I was the minister of aboriginal affairs … I had been at Grassy Narrows and I had worked with the leadership there,” the premier said.
“I had worked with scientists in the Ministry of the Environment to ask the question of what we could be doing,” she said.
“As soon as I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Rudd and hear the ability — to hear the science —that could clean up the river (and) we’ve put in place money.”
Pointing to the $85 million fund that will go to clean up that river system, Wynne said there is a need for Ottawa to help the province with compensation for those who were made sick by the mercury pollution.
“I think that this latest report points to the need for additional activity, apart from what we’re doing in terms of cleaning up the river,” she added.
“But there needs to be the federal government, the First Nation, the provincial government, Health Canada sitting at the table to determine what the next steps should be.”