A community delegation, including Lambton's medical officer of health, will meet with Ontario's minister of the environment and climate change at Queens Park Wednesday, November 29.
Dr. Sudit Ranade and other members of the former Lambton Community Health Study Board, including former Chair Anne Marie Gillis, will meet with Minister Chris Ballard to discuss his recent announcement in support of a community health study related to environmental exposures.
"We met informally a few weeks ago and came up with a list of questions including how much funding are they planning to allocate, what's the scope of the study, what kind of exposures would they be looking at and what time frame are they looking at," says Ranade. "I think the first step is for the Ministry of Environment to do some kind of gap analysis to understand what's the difference between what we already know and what we need to know and then to move forward with some community consultations about how to get there, because the original community consultations that happened as part of the community health study board were now eight or more years ago."
The group suspended activities in 2016 when they were unable to secure senior government funding toward the study -- estimated to cost $5-million -- that would examine the effects of the petrochemical industry on the health of local residents.
Ballard recently committed funding for it after several Toronto area journalists raised concerns about industry being secretive, and questioned whether Sarnia area residents were being properly notified about spills.