Winning Back the Words: Confronting Experts in an Environmental Public Hearing, by Mary Richardson, Joan Sherman and Michael Gismondi

There is always a tendency after the environmental hearings are over and the regulatory panel’s report is submitted to forgive and forget. What was once a pitched battle amongst environmentalists, local residents, an industrial proponcnt and various levels of government becomes a moldering batch of verbatim transcripts, a fading photograph file and increasingly muddled memories. Rivers are dammed, trees arc cut, pipelines are buried and life goes on. This is all a great shame because Canada has an international reputation for its public inquiries and royal commissions into energy, forestry and tourism developments. Many scholars of such processes see Canada (and particularly northern Canada) as the exemplar of natural justice, due process and courage in decision making. We even occasionally say no to or delay a project, where most countries would press on in the greater cause of pulp, oil and electrical power. Given the human propensity to forget, it is time to develop a literature of protest, of small holders, of dissidents and stewards who presented the other side of the developmental story. Winning Back the Words is a notable contribution to this genre, and joins such prior works as Bob Blair’s Pipeline (Bregha, 1979), The Lust of the Free Enterprisers: R e Oilmen of Calgary (House, 1980), Rationality and Ritual: R e Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Brituin (Wynne, 1982), and Prophets, Pastors und Public Choices: Cunudian Churches and the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Debate (Hutchinson, 1992) on my bookshelf. The Alberta Pacific (or AIPac) bleached kraft pulp mill project in northern Alberta provides the authors of Winning Back the Words with marvellous case study material, and the book focuses on the nvironmental impact assessment hearings which took place in Alberta and the Northwest Territories during 1989-1991. A central theme of Winning Back the Words is the efficacy of traditional wisdom and local knowledge in testing the claims of western scientific knowledge. Richardson, Sherman and Gismondi give this theme full play, and use well chosen direct quotes from the hearings’ transcripts to illustrate their points (p. 93):