Heather Wright/The Independent

Aamjiwnaang officials say provincial fines for environmental offences paid to Lambton County should go directly to the First Nation community.

And Lambton’s Warden says if he is returned to office next month, he’ll consider meeting with the leaders of the First Nation on the issue. Kevin Marriott made the comments after Wednesday’s county council meeting where councillors did not directly respond to a letter from Aamjiwnaang’s chief about the issue.

When the Minister of the Environment Parks and Conservation lays charges against Lambton County’s petrochemical companies, any fines generated go to Lambton County which administers the provincial court.

Recently, Imperial Oil was fined $1.125 million for an incident in April 2021 which included a victim surcharge of $225,000. All of the money will go to the county. But Chief Janelle Nahmabin, in a letter to county council, says it was residents of Aamjiwnaang who first reported the incident.

“It’s far too frequent that Aamjiwnaang residents have to accept noise, odour, vibration, harmful chemical exposure and light pollution as well as other impacts,” she says requesting the fines be given directly to Aamjiwnaang, adding “we are the ones directly impacted.”

“We could certainly use the funds to improve our Environment/Health departments capacity to address cumulative impacts,” Nahmabin says.

“Cumulative impacts remain of grave concern…the environmental injustice is an ongoing tragedy, a legacy of land use planning that would not be allowed today.”

Nahmabin asked the county consider the request to “assist us in our pursuit of Environmental Justice and Environmental Leadership…The current allocation of environmental fines in chemical valley is not helpful to us and we do plan to advocate for change in that.”

She adds the First Nation is hopeful Lambton will make the change to “show good relations” with Aamjiwnaang.

When the letter was presented to Lambton’s committee of the whole Nov. 20, Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley suggested the county should be meeting with Aamjiwnaang and talk about the issue. Instead, councillors received the letter without comment.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Bradley asked county officials to formally meet with the First Nation.

“When I go back to the land declaration that you and I both read at the beginning of the meeting, and I learned a long time ago that those could be hollow words unless you put them into action,” Bradley said.

But while Marriott said he’d be willing to meet with Nahmabin about the issue if he’s elected to serve another term as warden next week, councillors didn’t formally ask the new warden to talk with the Nahmabin.

Sarnia City/County Councillor Bill Dennis was firmly against the idea saying Nahmabin is “anti-Chemical Valley.

“She’s used words like her terms like environmental terrorism…They have an end goal to get rid of Chemical Valley,” Dennis said.

“We we cannot keep on being weak to these people. We can’t. We got to show some, some backbone,” said Dennis as Marriott and Sarnia City/County Councillor Chrissy McRoberts called for the councillor to stop speaking.

Marriott says he will “definitely look at” meeting with the First Nation if he’s elected but adds the province set up the Provincial Offences Court years ago and the precedent is for the lower tier government running the court for the province to receive all fines as payment.