IGNACE – The Township of Ignace has made a "Sterling" choice for its first clerk-treasurer in years.
Township council voted unanimously on Monday night to approve the hiring of Lesley Sterling to the position.
The municipality has not had someone in the position of clerk-treasurer since 2022, said Ignace outreach lead Jake Pastore.
Instead the clerk-treasurer’s roles have been filled by an interim clerk and an interim treasurer.
The people who held the interim positions will stay on with the municipality in other positions, Pastore said.
The clerk-treasurer position is “very, very important” to Ignace as it moves forward as the named host municipality for a nuclear waste repository, he said.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization chose a site west of the township last year for construction of a deep geological repository for spent fuel from Canadian reactors. Ignace and Wabigoon Lake First Nation were designated as host municipality and host First Nation.
It’s important that Ignace has someone “in place to be able to respond to all of the official requests from government” and aid in stakeholder relations, Pastore said.
The position “serves two purposes, but they’re both very important and required positions that you’ll find in every municipality in the province,” he said.
As clerk-treasurer, Sterling will report directly to township chief administrative officer Aaron Gullins.
A native of Vita, Man., Sterling is former general manager of the Northwest Community Futures Development Corporation in North Battleford, Sask.
Her educational background includes bachelor degrees from the University of Manitoba and Mount Royal University and post-graduate studies at McGill University and the University of Saskatchewan.
“We are so fortunate to have attracted such an experienced professional to our small Northwestern Ontario community,” Kim Baigrie, Ignace’s mayor, is quoted as saying in news release from the township.
“The hiring of Lesley will certainly strengthen our core base leadership team at township hall and build the capacity we require to move forward with many new projects in our community.”
The deep geological repository proposed by the industry-funded NWMO would store high-level radioactive waste from Canada’s nuclear power plants underground near Revell Lake south of Highway 17.
If the multibillion-dollar project clears regulatory and licensing hurdles and a separate review by the First Nation, the NWMO estimates construction could begin in the early 2030s and be completed perhaps a decade later.
