April 5, 1999, Cape Breton Post

Change JAG to GAG if members excluded because of employer

by Frank Delaney

To the Editor:

This is in response to an article in your paper on March 12 by Steve MacInnis (Recommendation Turfs SERL Employees, Families from JAG) and the article by Tanya Collier, March 25 (JAG Postpones Decision on Ethics Committee's SERL Ruling).

After reading both these articles, as well as the 18-page JAG ethics committee decision on the complaint by Mary Ruth MacLellan, it sickens a person to think that, within the Joint Action Group, discrimination at its worst rears its ugly head.

Ms. MacLellan and her anti-incineration ethics committee friends would like the public to believe only three employees of SERL (Sydney Environmental Resources Ltd., formerly Sydney Tar Ponds Clean-up Inc.) would, all by themselves, undermine the public's confidence, integrity, or perception of the JAG process because of where they work.

If she and her friends had done their homework and asked the right questions they would have found some surprising facts.


The jobs are steelworkers' jobs whether the cleanup proceeds with incineration or with any other technology decided on in the future.

Even tabling this discriminatory motion at JAG's March 24 roundtable is totally unbelievable and unacceptable.

It is beyond reasoning why this motion would even make it to the table.

Worse, the chairman of JAG sought legal advice on how to proceed properly with this discriminatory motion.

Some of the family members who could be expelled are fathers and war veterans whose only mistake is to have a son or daughter employed at SERL.

I ask JAG, will it, at its April roundtable meeting, stand up and tell our families and our veterines to leave the room, that they are not welcome?

Will JAG tell them not to express their views, if they so desire, now or in the future?

Is JAG willing to suppress the freedoms of our veterans and their families?

JAG in the future will have to change its newspaper ads to exclude whomever it sees fit to exclude whenever it doesn't like a person's opinions or place of work.

As a third generation steelworker and son of a veteran, I would like our elected government officials and local press to attend JAG's April roundtable meeting to see first hand what JAG is really becoming.

The April roundtable should be a real shot in the arm for JAG's public confidence and integrity.

JAG should put as much energy into achieving a cleanup technology instead of channeling its energies towards discrimination.

Maybe a name change should be tabled - from JAG to GAG. Frank Delaney,
member, United Steelworkers of America,
Coxheath

It's the same for kellogg's

Mary Ruth MacLellan
To the Editor:

I will not stoop to Shirley Christmas's ill-informed, illogical, inflammatory and racially charged condemnation of the JAG ethics committee decision (Even Thinking Expulsion puts JAG on Bad Course, Letters, March 29). The facts that Ms. Christmas seems to have ignored may help end the confusion.

In April 1997 I filed a conflict of interest complaint against Sydney Tar Ponds Clean-Up Inc. board members, employees, and their immediate family members with JAG's ethics committee because no other vendor who has remedial technology to clean up the tar ponds is permitted to sit at JAG except as an observer, but motions in relation to the cleanup were being passed, which had been moved and seconded by STPCUI people. This made me very uncomfortable since there was an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into the operation of STPCUI and its civil liability.

The JAG roundtable passed conflict of interest guidelines. After consultation with a lawyer, I believed STPCUI people violated three of these guidelines:


The ethics committee is comprised of four independent citizens who are not members of JAG. Four very lengthy meetings, similar to court proceedings were held. I represented myself while STPCUI (now SERL, Sydney Environmental Resources Ltd.) people were represented by a lawyer. All the evidence was heard and witnesses were called

Some 38 days later the ethics committee decision was delivered. It states:
The true danger area lies in the fear that the actual decision-making committees which deal with the selection of remedial technologies, or the procedure by which this technology would be selected, would be tainted by the participation of those who have a strong and abiding interest in the result of that selection and/or selection process. The other committees, which do not deal with those issues, or at least do not deal with them in such a direct way, do not warrant the same consideration.

The ethics committee decided the subjects must be excluded from the roundtable as well as steering, governance, Edgar, and remedial options committees but may sit on the website, site security, and the video committees.

The report continues: "The ethics committee unanimously agrees that in order to preserve the integrity of the JAG process from the perception of conflict of interest and to preserve public accountability, a cornerstone of the JAG process, the SERL board members, employees, and their immediate family members should be excluded from the committees noted .... The persons falling under these categories should be relegated to observer status with the same rights and limitations as any other JAG observer."

While I am not totally happy with the committee's decision (I feel that it does not go far enough), I believe I must respect the decision and the process that JAG has lived with since its inception.

The important thing is that there is and was potential for a conflict, real or perceived, and that trust is at the ethical core of this issue. Conflicts of interest involve the abuse, actual or potential, of the trust people have in one another.

This is why conflicts of interest not only injure individuals but also damage the whole JAG process by reducing the trust people have in it. Once you recognize that you are headed into a conflict, the ethical response is straightforward: Get out of the situation! This response will preserve the trust essential to the success of the JAG process.

The same applies everywhere. Kellogg's Corn Flakes employees and their fammilies are not permitted to enter any Kellogg's contests, even if the prize is bubble gum.

Can you imagine the chaos at JAG if every vendor with a remedial technology were permitted to site other than as an observer?

There was nothing personal in my complaint. It was intended only to preserve JAG's integrity. If this decision is overturned, JAG will become the instrument of a particular vested interest, and both JAG's integrity and its purpose will be destroyed.
Mary Ruth MacLellan
Phalen's Road, Glace Bay
JAG process beyond salvage
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