Help Us Make Durham a Greener healthier Place to Live!

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How we got to where we are

This website and the questionnaire that was sent to councillors arose out of the Region's efforts to build a garbage incinerator in Courtice. While we were all very disturbed about the health implications, many of us were equally incensed that a majority of our politicians were refusing to consider the concerns of their constituents, even to the extent of refusing to hold additional Public Information Sessions to inform the public.

The incinerator is only one of numerous issues which have arisen over the three years since the last election. Most of these issues were local but a few such as the greenbelt were regional in scope. These issues generally bring out the same group of activists which the politicians view as safe to ignore.

But the incinerator caught a nerve, and on the day of the final vote, close to a hundred deputations were presented and the visitors gallery was full until the final vote at 3:30 am.

It's all about the environment!

As you can see from the questionnaire, there are a great many issues facing municipal governments which are environmental in nature. But development issues and transportation issue are rarely viewed in that context ... but they should be!

Even procurement issues such as where you buy your paper - or whether you use paper at all - need to be considered in an environmental context.

Most politicians like to think of themselves as being green ... but do they walk the talk?

Where to from here

Which brings us to the point. What's the strategy from here? Driving traffic to this website is key to generating interest in the election

1. we will continue to plug the politicians to complete the questionnaire - their responses will be dated so we will know which ones will have answered with the benefit of knowing how others have answered
2. we encourage citizens to read their councillors' responses and add their comments to them. Are their answers consistent with their voting records?
3. for those councillors who have not responded, we encourage you to ask them why not - call them up, send letters to the editor - whatever it takes to shame them into responding. They know that, come election time they will be answering all sorts of questionnaires from narrow special interest groups so there is really no excuse for not responding to a questionnaire of such broad importance.
4. we will plug the media to cover the website and to read the comments that are left. We would like the media to use this site as a source of information and story ideas.

Join our committee(s)

Most of the things above are best done locally. Politicians are all elected in their local communities and the press, by and large, is organized locally. The questions that need to be asked and the letters that should be written are best done at the local level by people who are familiar with the local situations. Currently we are a smallish group of people from various parts of Durham Region who were drawn together by the incinerator debate. We need more people and ideally we can get a committee going in each committee - the more voices the better.

Vetting Candidates

The 'Task 2' at the top of this website is "Find new environmentally concerned candidates to fill the gaps" We need to decide where those gaps exist, and then develop a strategy to encourage good people to come forward and to encourage good local councillors to move up to the regional level. Much of this is also best done by local committees.

Raising Money

In order to play a meaningful role in the election we will need some money. The more we have, the larger the role we can play.