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PNGTS Extension Promotor Credibility

You'd like to have the list of landowners attending this meeting? No problem, I'll send it to you next week

France Bonneau, Forum Communictions. (public relations).
29 January 1997.
In respose to our intial request for the list of affected landowners at the January 29th TQM Ayer's Cliff meeting (as well as several subsequent requests), we were told repeatedly that we would receive the list. Then, suddenly, on the 20th of February France Bonneau told me I would NOT receive the list: "We are not allowed to let you have that list". We should contact our municipality.

No TQM employees will come on our land without our prior permission

Roger Senecal, Poisson, Bazinet et Associes (negociators).
6 February 1997.
Urgel Delisle, Urgel Delisle & Associes. (consulting engineers).
6 June 1997.
Surveyors employed by TQM began crossing our land in the Fall of 1996. We had no notification, advanced or otherwise of this intrusion: we discovered the continuous orange thread left behind by the surveyors. Since that time a veritable parade of TQM surveyors have been trespassing on our land. To our knowledge, TQM has never contacted any of the landowners to receive permission to be on their land.
When Mr. Senecal told me that no TQM personnel would enter my land without permission during a private conversation in February, I pointed out that they already had. Mr. Senecal dutifully made note of it - as if to say "Well, I'll certainly have to look into this...".
At the June 6th BAPE public information meeting Mr. Delisle attempted several times to perpetuate the myth that TQM contacts landowners before coming on their land. This deceipt was met with derision by all the landowners present.

Could you repeat that special offer for the benefit of Revenue Canada, Mr. Senecal?

Roger Senecal, Poisson, Bazinet et Associes. (negociators).
29 January 1997
At the Ayer's Cliff public information meeting, Mr. Senecal actually had the audacity to say that TQM would not make out "T-slips" for compensation paid, and therefore it would be up to landowners as to whether or not they would declare it on their tax forms. Compensation is, of course, taxable. Shame on you, Mr. Senecal!

What about the weekly low-level helicopter fly-overs, TQM?

Roger Senecal, Poisson, Bazinet et Associes. (negociators).
Claude Veilleux, Urgel Delisle & Associes. (consulting engineers).
6 February 1997.
In a meeting with Claude Veilleux and Roger Senecal I asked them very directly what was involved in the maintenance of a natural gas pipeline. They told me that the right of way would be cleared every two years by university students using brush cutters with shoulder harnesses - NO CHEMICALS.
And they said that a gas company employee would take periodic readings from a monitoring device placed next to the municiple road - no access required to my land.
What they neglected to say was that there would be WEEKLY low-level helicopter inspection flights over the length of the pipeline.

When is it ok to clear-cut forest for a pipeline and when is it not ok to clearcut forest for a pipeline?

Urgel Delisle, Urgel Delisle & Associes. (consulting engineers).
Sherbrooke Record, February 1997.
According to a February article in the Sherbrooke Record, Mr. Delisle, who is president of the company hired to do the environmental assessment for the PNGTS project, says it's OK to clear cut forest when the alternative is paying neighboring landowners compensation for a year's lost crops.
In the same article Mr. Delisle says it's NOT OK to clear cut forest along the side of an autoroute in order to create a route which is unanimously favored by landowners, residents, and municiple, MRC, and provincial elected representatives.
We thank Mr. Delisle for this clarification.

Roger Senecal is only aware of one incident of leakage in natural gas transmission lines in his thirty-years of experience

Roger Senecal, Poisson, Bazinet et Associes. (negociators).
6 February 1997.
I looked up the statistics, Mr. Senecal. In 1996 alone there were 14 incidents involving natural gas pipelines which resulted in ignition or releases into the atmosphere. In the past five years there have been 75 such incidents reported to the Canadian National Energy Board.
Check it out for yourself.

What is it about NO that you don't understand, Mr. Delisle?

Urgel Delisle, Urgel Delisle & Associes. (consulting engineers).
Sherbrooke Record, February 1997.
Landowners, residents, three municipalities (Stukely, Austin, and Ste. Catherine de Hatley), the Memphremagog MRC, have all told Urgel Delisle that they are opposed to the project unless it can be run next to autoroute.
Mr. Delisle refuses to take NO for an answer. He claims that NO really means that we want to negociate, it's "all a part of the game".
Does Mr. Delisle know what negociation means?

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