Maritime Electric hiding in the field

Over the past year, Maritime Electric worked to construct the underwater cable ensuring that the permits, construction and community involvement were taken care of, said Kim Griffin, the company’s public affairs manager. Let’s look at the comments above made by Griffin Tuesday at the grand opening of the newly activated cables.

“We wanted the communities to be involved as well as first nations groups with land rights.” (Does that mean we wanted the community to be involved but we didn’t really care at the end of the day what there concerns are?) “We took their comments, as well as advice from fishermen in the areas involved.” (What she is really saying is we took their comments and threw them in the garbage.)

See she is talented, she never really gets caught up.

The true story is that Maritime Electric got a $147.5 million dollar project pushed through the community of Borden-Carleton, destroying their last accessible beach and ignoring the concerns of council and the residents. They have reason to celebrate and I’m sure they are laughing behind closed doors as to how easy it was to push this small community into submission and force-feed them two cables that make their harbourfront now inaccessible to large ships, the shoreline unapproachable and unpleasing to residents and tourist alike, and destroys the one last beach. Kim took her team to town more then a year ago with a tray of ham and cheese sandwiches laced with corporate spin and feed the community about how they are going to be a great corporate citizen and how they want to work with the community to make this project a success for everyone involved. She was happy to hear our concerns and proud to say that with her company we would have a voice in this project. $147.5 million dollars later and they left behind some Timbits and a shattered beach covered in shrapnel like rocks for the community to fumble over. An eye sore and the first image tourist see of this beautiful island.

Makes sense now why Maritime Electric rented a tent and put it in a empty field - rather than rent the upstairs of the community legion and invite the town to their celebrations.

Maybe they are out of ham and cheese sandwiches and Timbits after all, or was the empty field a great place to hide from the town they have already forgotten. Great job Kim.

Robert Palmer, Borden-Carleton