Delay dressed as diligence: a community calls on Huron Shores' council for truth and action

This is a story of infrastructure failure exacerbated by bureaucratic inertia and poor decision-making. In the Municipality of Huron Shores, a bridge remains closed—not because it’s unsafe—but because of an unconnected culvert that no one will take responsibility for. The result? A community left stranded—literally and figuratively—with no end in sight.

The root lies in years of inaction. Engineering reports repeatedly flagged the need for repairs to a primary road access bridge. The warnings were ignored and predictably the structure deteriorated. This past January, a new engineer ordered the bridge closed based on file review alone. Upon further inspection, the bridge reopened in March under reduced load limits.

In April disaster struck again—not with the bridge—but with the road leading to it, where two sinkholes formed above a large-diameter culvert which prompted another closure.

What followed has been a bureaucratic blame game; a no-neck nightmare. The culvert appears to sit between two properties—one tied to the Ministry of Transportation (MTO), the other private. MTO fixed one sinkhole, but denied responsibility for the other. The Municipality also disclaimed ownership, citing the culvert’s absence from asset records as the reason. 

What happened next? The Municipality referred the question of its own responsibility to legal counsel—that was in April.

Meanwhile residents have been forced to rely on a secondary access gravel road never intended to carry such a load. It has ultimately and steadily deteriorated under the weight of it. It has taken four months for Council to receive the legal opinion. And as it turns out, we have waited four months to hear Council say, 'Not it'—the same stance it took in April, and repeated in an August 19th public statement. That statement also says Council is directing staff to send a letter to MTO, Ministry of Natural Resources, and Transport Canada requesting further information about the jurisdictional responsibilities for the bridge and culvert. It begs the question: why wasn’t a letter sent back in April? It begs another question too—when MTO stopped after repairing only one of the sinkholes, what did Council ask for or receive from MTO as "proof" of their lack of responsibility?

If we, the citizenry, want to hear answers to these questions and want to hear what Council plans to do to compel others to act, we must wait until a public meeting in late October—6 months after the culvert failure and at the only public meeting called since the initial bridge closure in January. And not for nothing, but we have already asked these questions (and many more) to no avail.

Adding insult to injury, we have to wait another 30 days to potentially hear the basis for the legal advice that suggests our Municipality isn’t responsible for this culvert due to missing paperwork, and only if Council agrees that the public interest outweighs privilege in this case.

The Community Voices Committee (CVC), formed in response to the initial bridge closure back in January, is calling for accountability and purposeful action. We call on Council to waive privilege and release the legal opinion and its basis. We call on Council to clearly identify what it plans to do to hold the responsible party accountable, beyond sending a letter.

And we call on Council to provide this information well in advance of the October public meeting.

Failure to do so would suggest that this Council has no interest in meaningful engagement or dialogue with its constituents—already seemingly evidenced by its conduct to date. And it would suggest that this Council has forgotten a fundamental tenant of leadership: service before self-preservation.

Our community deserves better than the silence that comes from empty words and the willful blindness of a Council looking for a way out rather than a way through.

We are well past the point where silence and delay dressed as diligence can be excused. 

The time for excuses is over. The time for leadership is now.

The Community Voices Committee (CVC) is a group of concerned citizen advocates in the Municipality of Huron Shores. 

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