Tags
health effects wind farms, health effects wind turbine noise, North Gower wind project, Ottawa wind project, Pierre Poilievre, Queen's Jubilee Medal, Wind Concerns Ontario, wind farm North Gower, wind farm Ottawa, wind farm petition, wind farm Richmond
Member of Parliament for Nepean-Carleton Pierre Poilievre gave Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medals to four community members last evening. The MP said that too often, politics and media concentrate on urban life when he said, the rural communities are in many ways the backbone of Canada.
One of the awards went to Ottawa Wind Concerns chair Jane Wilson, who is also the president of Wind Concerns Ontario.
Mr Poilievre said in specific that the award was to acknowledge advocacy work to protect the health and safety of people living near industrial-scale wind power projects.
Several months ago, Mr Poilievre launched a petition to be taken to the House of Commons to ask for a halt to the Ottawa wind power project based in North Gower-Richmond, to wait until the results of health impact studies are available. (The petition is still availble for signing–contact us, or drop into the MP’s office at 250 Greenbank.)
He also commissioned an economic review of the project by the Library of Parliament, which found that the cost to taxpayers in Ontario for the power project would be $4.8 million, per year.
We are going to fight ON. And ON. It is not fair that an entire community should be affected by the decision of a few landowners to put profits before their community.
To donate–we need funds for ongoing legal advice–please send a cheque to PO Box 3 North Gower ON K0A 2T0. To have your name added to our (confidential) email list, email us at ottawawindconcerns@yahoo.ca
Reblogged this on Northgowerwindactiongroup's Blog.
This is a very strange honour, to my mind. “Ms. Wilson saves rural Ontario from health harms” seems to be the feat that she has performed. I infer this from the parliamentarian’s opening remarks about attention usually being paid to urban areas. What I don’t understand is how she could be honoured for saving Ontarians from health harms that provincial ministries say do not exist. And why is “rural” Ontario mentioned specifically? Again, is it because urban areas have their health champions to defeat the siting of LWTs in urban areas? I would have thought that rural Ontario is rife with groups clamouring to save the health of rural Ontarians.
It is this kind of honour that causes me to suspect that the real desire is to stop the deploying of LWTs in rural Ontario for reasons other than health harms. The reasons could be aesthetics, feared loss of property value, feared harm to flora and fauna, loss of hunting, loss of future development opportunities, harm to local tourism, and many more concerns.
Why “rural” Ontario should feel free from the burden of producing green electricity is a mystery to me. Mining, forestry and agriculture and many other forms of resource utilization have always proceeded in rural Ontario. Why is the capturing of wind energy any different? How can some rural dwellers divorce themselves from the solutions to problems of global climate change? Is it because they feel that they have not created the problem and that they are in some obscure way much cleaner and greener than their urban neighbours? This would be a huge myth.
It is time for these opponents to LWTs and many other development projects to assume their proper responsibilities as Ontario citizens and put this childish NIMBYism behind them. This immature sense of rural superiority wears thin.
Thanks for your comment but your remarks indicate that you are not open-minded on this issue at all (you do after all have ties to a wind power lobby group). I would call your attention to the article by David Frum in January 26 National Post and one by Lorrie Goldstein in The Sun dated January 26th, which outlines the economic fallacies of wind power generation. So, since there is clear indication of health impacts (see Kincardine, Ripley, Ridgetown, Cultus-Clear Creek-Frogmore, Melancthon, Amaranth) WHY are we doing this to our rural and small urban communities?
The technology exists to produce clean, reliable power—that isn’t wind power.