In an Ontario town split over a nuclear dump site, the fallout is over how they'll vote on the future
CBC
A citizen's group opposed to burying Canada's stockpile of spent nuclear fuel half a kilometre below a southwestern Ontario farm town is demanding a paper ballot rather than an online vote in an upcoming referendum on whether it should welcome radioactive waste.
Canada's nuclear industry's quest to find a place to store the growing amount of highly radioactive detritus it produces stretches back decades. The search has narrowed to two potential host communities in Ontario: Ignace (four hours northwest of Thunder Bay) and the Municipality of South Bruce (two hours north of London).
For years, South Bruce has found itself divided over being a potential host — split, between those who believe a new industry is a way to reclaim lost prosperity that lapsed with the glory days of farming, and those who think jobs and subsidies from the nuclear industry has blinded the others to the risks of welcoming radioactive waste into the community.
On Monday, town councillors in South Bruce voted to accept the official question on the ballot: "Are you in favour of the Municipality of South Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization's (NWMO) proposed deep geological repository?"
"I have no issues with how the question is worded," Michelle Stein, a member of the grassroots Protect Our Waterways — No Nuclear Waste, said.
"Our concern is the way that they're holding the referendum as an online vote."
Stein said unlike paper ballots, which can be audited and verified by anyone, she argues the way a computerized voting system sorts and tallies ballots is largely a mystery to laymen, hidden beneath source code that's indecipherable to all who lack specialized knowledge.
"This is a forever decision. Why wouldn't they want tangible physical proof? We can go back and count those paper ballots and they can say, 'look, here's the ballots. This is what the people voted for.'"
But advocates of online voting say it makes voting easier, cheaper and can increase participation. For those reasons, online voting has become increasingly popular among Ontario municipalities with some 3.8 million Ontario voters voting online in the province's 2022 municipal elections.
South Bruce Mayor Mark Goetz said the reason council went with online voting for the referendum is because council needs a strong majority to either vote yes or no for the referendum to be binding.
Since adopting online voting for municipal elections, Goetz said South Bruce has never seen higher turnout.
"We achieved a 59 per cent voter turnout through electronic voting, which I believe is an Ontario record."
Goetz said there were worries on council that, if the town couldn't achieve 50 per cent voter turnout, then it would be up to him and the town's six councillors to decide in an official vote.
"I want the people to make the decision in this referendum and I'm going to do everything I can to make that happen."
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