Tag Archives: Kathleen Wynne

Ottawa concerned about closeness of proposed wind project in North Gower

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Here from the Ottawa Sun, a story by Susan Sherring, on the opposition to the proposed North Gower-Richmond wind power generation project.

No to wind turbines in North Gower

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Susan Sherring

By ,Ottawa Sun

First posted: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 06:03 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 06:19 PM EDT

Wind turbines
Wind turbines at the Erie Shores Wind Farm near Port Burwell generate power. Similar turbines may be popping up near Ottawa. (CRAIG GLOVER/QMI AGENCY)

For years, Gary Thomas has run a successful 50-acre Christmas tree farm in North Gower.

And he does it right, a family event with horse-drawn sleighs, tractor-drawn wagons and a warm fire with hot chocolate and cookies waiting for you upon your return from the bush.

Don’t forget the sweet smells of fresh Scotch Pine and Balsam fir.

Idyllic? Absolutely.

Now picture the same Norman Rockwell scene with a 600-foot high wind turbine less than 1 km away.

Sort of jars the senses, doesn’t it?

And then picture the massive turbine casting a shadow over the scene every few seconds.

Thomas says he can barely believe the possibility.

But indeed, there continues to be a looming threat of a wind turbine project as his next-door-neighbour.

A company called Prowind has applied more than once to the province for permission to build the wind turbine project in North Gower.

And when the province opens up for bids again, there’s every expectation Prowind will submit a proposal again.

“We’re not very pleased with it for a number of reasons. Health, there’s the psychological aspect, and the flicker effect, with every few second have a shadow come in front of our house, this is crazy,

“I’m not sure customers having the old fashioned experience will like the shadow,” he said.

Agreed.

Thomas doesn’t just worry about the immediate effects of the turbines, but he and his wife have counted on the farm for their retirement — and if the giant wind turbines are erected, doesn’t know how that will effect the resale value of their home.

“We’re hopeful Watson and council won’t put them in the municipality,” he says, in an interview with the Sun on Wednesday.

The threat of a giant wind turbine farm in their community has galvanized residents of North Gower in opposition of the project.

“We really don’t need these wind power projects,” said Jane Wilson, the chair of Ottawa Wind Concerns.

The group is circulating a petition — which now has about 400 names on it — advising the province North Gower doesn’t want to be home to a wind turbine project.

“It’s a pretty big power plant, I’m not sure people understand that. It’s huge, these are really large machines, they make noise and the vibrations can be upsetting,” she said.

The group has the support of their ward councillor Scott Moffatt, who’s working with them and city staff to craft a motion asking the province to give municipalities a say in where the wind power projects can and can’t be located.

“The majority are against it,” he added.

……………..

Read more at the Ottawa Sun website and take the poll!

Parker Gallant on energy ministry: aiding the fortunes of … Quebec!

21 Monday Oct 2013

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Parker Gallant on Ontario’s Energy Ministry: aiding the fortunes of…Quebec

 chiarelli1.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo

No, no, don’t confuse me with the facts!
Endorsing fallacies, avoiding realities—Ontario’s Ministry of Energy
Global Adjustment charge jumps from $800 million to $6.5 billion in four years
Watch out Ontario, Quebec is targeting our industry!  That’s the message one gets from the announcement by Premier Pauline Marois that Quebec will use Hydro Quebec’s surplus power to attract job-creating industries to Quebec.  An article in the October 8, 2013 edition of the Financial Post states Hydro Quebec will set aside 50 terawatt (TWh) hours for that purpose.  To put that in perspective, 50 TWh represents 35% of Ontario’s total power demand (141.3 TWh) in 2012, or enough to power five million average Ontario households.
So what is Ontario doing to stave off this aggressive push from Quebec?  Well, since being named Premier, Kathleen Wynne has overseen the Ministry of Natural Resources issue renewable energy approvals for about 811 megawatts (MW) of industrial-scale wind power.  Three of those, including a Samsung contract (Armow Wind for 180 MW), occurred in just the last two weeks!  Her government also announced October 10, 2013 that they will scrap the plan to build 2,000 MW of new nuclear.  That 2,000 MW was part of the Long-Term Energy Plan issued by Brad Duguid in late 2010 when he was Energy Minister.
Here is what Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli had to say about abandoning the new nuclear build:  “We’re in a comfortable (electricity generation) surplus position at this time and it’s not advisable to make the major investments in new nuclear. Some time in the future we might be looking at it.”
To put that into perspective, it would take approximately 7,000 MW of industrial wind turbines to produce the equivalent power of the proposed 2,000 MW of nuclear.  That 7,000 MW would entail the erection of almost 3,500 turbines spread throughout the province, producing power at 29% of their rated capacity.   That same 7,000 MW of wind would produce power 80% of the time when we don’t need it—the middle of the night, during the spring freshet, and in the fall when our demand for power is the lowest.  And, when we don’t need the power we will often pay the wind companies to not produce power. We will also require other power sources to back up those turbines (now expensive gas plants, two of which were moved at a cost of over $1 billion ) so Ontario ratepayers will pay twice for any power we may need.
So what will this cost us?
A report from the Ontario Power Authority (that no longer appears on their website) pegged the Global Adjustment Mechanism (GAM) for the 12 months ended January 31, 2009 at $800 million.  Fast forward just four years to January 31, 2013 and the total GAM had jumped to $6.5 billion for the comparable 12 months.  The GAM looks sure to hit the $8 billion mark by the end of January 2014. That GAM pot principally reflects renewable energy costs along with money spent on getting Ontarians to conserve.
Looking at what the cost of 2,000 MW of new nuclear might be to the Ontario ratepayers and  using the original estimate of $26 billion, you get a capital cost of $43.4 million per TWh (assuming a 40-year lifespan).  That includes a fuel cost of 6.3 million per TWh.  For those who like to equate that to a kilowatt hour (kWh) the cost (without Operations, Maintenance and Administration [OMA]) would be 4.43 cents per kWh and 8.3 cents per kWh when OMA is included both less than recently announced average (8.88 cents) time-of-use (TOU) prices set for the next six months.
Now compare that to the cost of a TWh from wind turbines and assume they will produce at 29% of their rated capacity.   At 11.5 cents per kWh the cost to produce the same power jumps to $115 million per TWh (plus another 20% cost of living increases) without adding in the costs of back-up power from gas turbines, the spilling of clean hydro or “steaming off” nuclear power from Bruce.  The back-up alone adds over $80 million per TWh bringing the cost per kWh to 20 cents.
So how do Ontario’s electricity rates for large industrial customers compare with Quebec?  According to Hydro Quebec energy costs in Montreal at $100 would cost $223 in Toronto and $90 in Winnipeg.
It may be time for Premier Wynne and Minister Chiarelli to do a reality check.  Why didn’t they simply announce that Ontario doesn’t need more electricity production from wind, solar and nuclear “due to our comfortable surplus position” instead of the fallacy that we need more wind?
We certainly don’t need electricity generation that will complete the process of making Ontario the most expensive place to operate energy intensive industry in all of North America.  Stop the spin, stop the fallacy that wind can replace nuclear!
Parker Gallant,
October 21, 2013

Minister Chiarelli: pretending things are fixed

18 Friday Oct 2013

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In a letter published in The Ottawa Citizen today (but not available online) Wind Concerns Ontario vice-president Parker Gallant writes:

Ottawa Citizen, October 18, 2013

Peddling empty promises

RE: Angry Ontarians talk turkey with Wynne over $1B gas plant bill, Oct. 10

On the same day that Ontario’s new Auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk, released her report on the Oakville gas plant cancellation, Ontario’s Minister of Energy Bob Chiarelli tried to deflect the bad news in a  news release headlined “Ontario Improving Decision-Making on Large Energy Projects.” In it was a link to 18 recommendations by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO).

The recommendations were fluff. Words like “outreach,” “understand,” and “enhance,” were used but nowhere was any mention of returning local planning to the communities where these large power projects are to be sited.

Minister Chiarelli declared that “We want to get these decisions right … we are committed to ensuring communities have their say right from the start.”

Sending out a news release dealing with siting power projects on the same day that the Auditor General disclosed that the cost of moving the Oakville gas plant cost the ratepayers and taxpayers of the province $675 million,  is not just an admission that they got the siting process horribly wrong, it  pretends it is being fixed.

The truth is, the Ministry of Energy remains firmly in charge and will decide what it wants. To tell Ontario communities that they will “have their say from the start” is insulting.  In just four days in early October, approvals for three more huge wind power generation projects were announced, the largest with a capacity of 180 MW. All these were without community consultation.

Mr Chiarelli is peddling more empty promises to detract from the mess that the Ontario Liberals have made of what used to be a competitive electricity sector.

Parker Gallant, Wind Concerns Ontario

 

 

Parker Gallant: are Ontario’s electricity bills a regressive tax?

07 Monday Oct 2013

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On September 10, 2013, when the temperature hit 34 degrees in Toronto, demand for electricity in Ontario peaked at 8 PM when we were consuming 22,417 megawatts (MW) of power.  At that point according to the Adequacy Report from the IESO, we still had excess capacity−8,437 MW in fact, or enough to power over seven million average Ontario homes.

So the question becomes, if we have power to spare, why do we continue to add expensive sources of power generation like wind and solar to the electricity grid?   Surely the addition of that expensive generation that must be backed up will do nothing more than drive electricity prices up.
Has our electricity system turned into nothing more than a form of wealth transfer or, perhaps, a regressive tax?   The latter is defined as: “A tax that takes a larger percentage from low-income people than from high-income people. A regressive tax is generally a tax that is applied uniformly. This means that it hits lower-income individuals harder.”
As it turns out, the management of our electricity system by the Liberal government during the past 10 years has been both.   Consider the following points and see if any of them were meant to keep our electricity prices competitive with other markets, and that might have helped to create jobs in Ontario. Job creation may have resulted in tax revenue that could have been use to reduce our deficit, improve health care, built better transit, or provide better government services.
Reality in Ontario today
Here is what ratepayers must accept:
§     Paying for smart meters and resulting time-of-use pricing–we eat supper after 7 PM and do our laundry in the middle of the night
§     Paying to replace smart meters because they “don’t communicate”
§     Paying for the development of the “smart grid” which turns out to be not so smart.
§     Subsidizing very large energy consumers by picking up a chunk ($200/400 million) of what they would have to pay if they were a household, just to keep remaining manufacturing jobs
§     Paying huge Net Revenue payments to gas plant electricity generators for sitting idle
§     Paying wind generators to not produce electricity
§     Paying solar generators to not produce electricity
§     Paying to erect meteorological stations to measure how much wind generators might have produced so that we can pay them for not producing
§     Paying for “steaming off” perfectly clean nuclear power from Bruce Power
§     Paying for the Ontario Power Authority to run ads on TV, radio and the newspapers to tell us to conserve electricity, racking up average annual spending of $300 million
§     Paying for costs of operating the Ontario Power Authority, which we were told was a temporary long-term planning agency
§     Paying to get the local distribution company to pick up old refrigerators and being told it’s free
§     Paying to move two gas generation plants at a cost of about $1 billion
§     Paying to have the school boards in Toronto and elsewhere put solar panels on their roofs so they could generate money to fix some of the roofs
§     Paying for grants to people that can afford to purchase new expensive electric vehicles (EVs)
§     Paying to put in charging stations for those EVs that use the streets but don’t pay gas taxes
§     Paying for someone else to use coupons to purchase CFL or LED light bulbs
§     Paying for grants to small and medium sized companies to retrofit their lighting systems
§     Paying for expensive electricity generated by solar panels placed on your local municipally owned arena
§     Paying for grants so your municipality can exchange incandescent and halogen street lights to LED lights
§     Paying your local distribution company extra money each year because their revenue deteriorated because you conserved electricity, so they asked for and got a rate increase blessed by the Ontario Energy Board
§     Paying to connect wind and solar generators to the transmission system run by Hydro One, a wholly owned provincial monopoly
§     Paying the cost of electricity produced by your neighbour for those solar panels on his roof for which he gets 80 cents a kilowatt hour
§     Paying for the costs of solar power produced by corporations like Loblaws, Canadian Tire,  IKEA, etc., which they sell into the electricity grid at 70 cents a kilowatt hour, but buy the power they need at the same (or lower) price that you pay
§     Paying forever for “residual stranded debt” that should have been paid off 5 years ago.
§     Paying for the sale of surplus electricity to New York, Michigan, etc. at a price 75/85% below its cost
§     Paying HST on our electricity bills which automatically added 7% to its cost and generates well in excess of $1 billion for the province’s coffers
Now look over these 28 points and think about which represent “wealth transfers” and which represent a “regressive tax.”   Review them again and pick out any that added cost-effective new generation.  Hint: you will probably have trouble finding the latter!
Ontario’s legacy
Energy Minister Chiarelli recently bragged about the reputed $35 billion in new investment attracted to the province by the Green Energy and Green Economy Act and the 31,000 jobs that it supposedly created. Those 31,000 jobs (most are relatively short term construction jobs) will cost the ratepayers of the province over $3 million each.
What Minister Chiarelli didn’t say was that the $35-billion investment will cost ratepayers well over $100/120 billion by the time those 20-year contracts have ended, and most of that will be extracted from the pockets of many Ontarians who cannot afford the “regressive tax” it has become. Many are discovering they can’t afford to turn their lights on for fear of being unable to buy groceries.
What a legacy for the McGuinty/Wynne team.
Parker Gallant,
October 3, 2013
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily Wind Concerns Ontario.

Ontario’s Not a Willing Host communities meet today

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Coalition of ‘Unwilling Host’ Municipalities

Press Advisory August 20, 2013, Ottawa

Representatives of the 62 municipalities that have declared themselves ‘unwilling hosts’ to wind turbines are coming together during the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) meeting currently underway in Ottawa to discuss ways to bring their concerns more forcefully to the government.

According to Kevin Marriott, Mayor of Enniskillen, ‘the government has not addressed the concerns of these communities’.  In the Throne Speech and other statements by the Premier, they talked about wanting to locate projects in willing host communities, but there has been no substance to these announcements in terms of municipal input will be incorporated in the process.  Meanwhile, the government continues to approve wind turbine projects without consideration of municipal concerns according to Marriott.

Some municipal officials represented at AMO have already experienced the impact of wind turbines on their communities.  Complaints start once when they become operational with people being forced from their homes by noise and low frequency noise vibrations.  These municipalities are looking for the MOE to actually start enforcing the noise standards that they have set and to follow up on the health complaints being filed with Medical Officers of Health.

Mayor April Jeffs of Wainfleet wants the government to start applying learning from these early projects and apply increased set-backs from people’s homes to new projects before they are approved.  Wainfleet adopted a 2 kilometer set-back by-law that was challenged in court by the wind developer.

Municipalities are looking for the government to return real local planning authority for wind turbines to local municipalities.  These powers were taken away by the Green Energy Act. Municipalities are better placed that a Queen’s Park civil servants to identify local issues that need to be addressed in reviewing wind turbine projects.  They also have processes in place to review and approve other complex or controversial projects building projects that take place in their municipalities.

The municipal representatives at AMO will be meeting Tuesday August 20 at 4:30 pm. in the Governor-General 1 on the 4th floor of the Westin Hotel in Ottawa.

For further details contact, Kevin Marriott at 519-383-9170 or April Jeffs at 905-658-7890.

Ottawa economist on 10 years of power mismanagement in Ontario

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

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You’ve read Bob Lyman, an economist specializing in energy issues, on these pages before.

In his latest work, he has written an overview of the last 10 years of energy policy as it relates to electricity in Ontario, and come up with the very worrying conclusion: the whole thing has been grossly mismanaged.

The question now is, can Ontario ever get out of this hole? That’s tough when Ontario keeps approving big, expensive wind power projects on the order of one a week this summer, despite not having a current long-term energy plan.

Here is Bob Lyman’s latest:

Ten Years of Liberal Mismanagement of Ontario’s Electricity System

A Layperson’s Summary

On July 16, 2013, Parker Gallant, a retired banker who for about six years has written about Ontario electricity policies, wrote an article to mark the forthcoming tenth anniversary of the Liberal Party’s tenure as government of Ontario. Mr. Gallant’s article can be found at the following link:

http://www.freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/07/ontario-liberals-10-years-of.html

This article is of great importance for Ontario residents who want to understand what has been happening to electricity supply, demand and prices over the past decade and, perhaps more importantly, how they should weigh these developments as they contemplate forthcoming elections in the province. Shortly, there will be five by-elections in different parts of Ontario that may swing the balance of power in the legislature. It is also likely that there will be a general election in Ontario within the next two years.

Voters need to understand what the fuss is all about and how it affects them. Unfortunately, Mr. Gallant’s article, as wonderfully insightful as it is, might be difficult to understand for the average citizen who does not follow electricity matters on a regular basis. The objective of this note is to offer a somewhat simplified version of the story people should know. …

Read the whole document here: Ten Years of Liberal Mismanagement of Ontario’s Electricity System

Upcoming topics: what does the situation at Chatham-Kent airport (where 8 turbines have been order removed) really mean?

Please contact us at ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com

Donations welcome at PO Box 3, North Gower ON   K0A 2T0

Green Energy Act “bigger debacle” than gas plant scandal

27 Thursday Jun 2013

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Here from today’s Financial Post, a comment from Parker Gallant, on the cost of the Green Energy and Green Economy Act. He estimates $1,100 per household per year, but that’s not including property value loss for areas living near wind power projects…Ontario is in deep, deep trouble, and it’s not over yet.

The Ontario Power Authority is currently tripping through Ontario asking communities what will make them happier about the planning process for large-scale power projects.

Here is Parker Gallant: http://www.freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/06/parker-gallant-ontario-green-energy-act.html

Email us at ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com (join our confidential email list for updates) and please donate toward our legal and other costs PO Box 3 North Gower ON  K0A 2T0

Ontario Government’s green power policy: an “abject failure”

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

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Here today from the Waterloo Region Record, a comment on the McGuinty government’s “green energy” program which was meant to bring jobs and prosperity to Ontario, while cleaning up our air (never mind that the air pollution in Southern Ontario is from cars and trucks).

The author rightly points out that the government continues to put a brave face on its policy, even as it disintegrates daily. What the author of this comment doesn’t know, is that the Ontario government continues to approve giant wind power projects weekly. In fact, this month has seen a record number of project approvals, including one at West Lincoln, which had passed a resolution at Council declaring itself not to be a “willing host” to wind power on this scale.

Here is the comment. Email us at ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com and donations are most welcome for legal and other costs at PO Box 3, North Gower ON  K0A 2T0

http://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/3854511-a-white-flag-for-green-energy/

A white flag for green energy

Waterloo Region Record

The Ontario Liberals are striving mightily to portray their disastrous green energy program as a rousing success. Do not believe them. It is an abject failure that inflated electricity costs, alienated rural communities and never lived up to its billing as the engine not just of more jobs but an entirely new manufacturing sector.

This is the context in which to understand last week’s announcement that the province had downsized a multi-billion dollar deal it signed with Samsung Group in 2010 to produce electricity from wind and solar projects.

Instead of giving the South Korean corporate giant $9.7 billion for 2,500 megawatts of electricity, Ontario will spend $6 billion for 1,369 megawatts. We pay less. We also get less. Samsung is cutting its investment in new green energy plants and components in Ontario from the $7 billion it originally pledged to $5 billion.

Although the government once boasted that Samsung would create 16,000 new manufacturing jobs, the number of new workers being talked about last week was just 900. That’s a flimsy foundation for an economic renaissance.

Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli defended the latest Samsung agreement as a way “to bend the cost curve (down) for ratepayers.” But even he can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The best that can be said of his accomplishment is that the government’s ill-conceived and poorly delivered green energy crusade will leave ratepayers battered but not comatose.

Go back a few years and remember then-premier Dalton McGuinty’s grand and hubristic vision of turning this province into a green utopia. Making everyone pay far more for wind and solar energy than other sources of electricity was the key to his plan. Sure it would hurt consumers — but it would be worth it.

Not only would the McGuinty brain trust produce more energy for Ontario, it would do so in an environmentally friendly way. To top it all off, in the wake of the devastating recession of 2008-09 in which thousands of the province’s factory jobs were lost, the Liberals were going to create a thriving green energy industry that would sell to a global market.

It turns out McGuinty was a modern-day Don Quixote tilting at wind turbines. He was off on just about every premise. The World Trade Organization recently struck down the made-in-Ontario provision in McGuinty’s program.

The Liberals overestimated Ontario’s energy needs. The recession drove down demand for electricity and the province wound up with a surplus of it. We don’t need all the electricity Samsung was originally contracted to deliver.

The job boom never materialized either. As it happens, China can make solar panels far cheaper than Ontario. No wonder one of Canada’s most touted solar power firms, Arise Technology Corporation of Cambridge, went bankrupt last year while solar energy equipment maker Silken SA closed its Windsor operation.

And the bloated cost of this energy scheme will hurt for years to come. In 2011, Auditor General Jim McCarter estimated Ontario’s green energy policies were adding $220 million a year to the province’s already soaring hydro bills which were now among the most expensive in North America. No wonder the government scaled back its rates for green energy.

With McGuinty now gone and Kathleen Wynne in the premier’s office, the government is running away from the green energy program as fast as it can. The Samsung agreement has been overhauled. In future, priority will be given to wind turbine projects where there is community support.

For months, Ontarians have been justifiably outraged by the same government’s cavalier cancellation of two gas-fired electricity plants, arguably for political reasons and at a cost to the public of at least $585 million. The green energy program is as big a fiasco — and will cost more in the long-run.

 

Toronto Star’s Walkom: matters just keep getting worse

06 Thursday Jun 2013

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In yesterday’s Toronto Star, veteran commentator Thomas Walkom passed judgment on the Wynne government’s recent fixes to the Green Energy and Green Economy Act: “Its efforts may be too little. They are definitely late.”

Walkom noted that distasteful projects get the heave-ho in Toronto, but the huge wind power projects are located in rural Ontario and the government has been “unbending” and refused to “accept persistent claims from local residents that wind farms put their health at risk….in virtually all cases, the Liberals sided with the big, private generating companies seeking to establish these profitable wind farms.”

The announcement of changes last week by Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli, Walkom said, is no big change at all: “in a CBC radio interview following his announcement, Chiarelli made it clear:Queen’s Park still reserves the right to authorize more large-scale, private wind farms, even if local residents and councils are opposed.

“Ironically,” he adds, “the government continues to defend its green energy policy at a time when, in one important regard, it is no longer relevant…” and he goes on to say that coal is shut down and the WTO decision on Ontario’s 60-% content rule will affect the government’s plans for a manufacturing boost in Ontario.

“[F]for a government trying to present itself and its wind turbine allies as sensitive to the needs of ordinary people, matters just keep getting worse.”

See the whole article here: http://www.freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/06/wind-turbine-reforms-fail-to-quell.html

 

The Chiarelli-Wynne non-announcement for Ontario municipalities: nothing has changed

03 Monday Jun 2013

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Last week, Energy Minister and former Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli announced that Ontario would in future increase “local control” in renewable energy development. This was in reaction to the fact that in recent weeks, almost 40 municipalities took the step of formally passing a resolution to say they are NOT a “willing host” to wind power projects, picking up on remarks made months earlier by Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Mr Chiarelli announced that a new process will “replace the existing large project stream of Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program and better meet the needs of communities.”

A new “competitive procurement process for projects over 500 kW” will be announced in the fall.

What does it all mean?

Absolutely nothing.

In fact, things may even be worse for communities who don’t wish to expose their residents to the health impacts, property value loss, and social divisions that come along with large-scale wind power generation projects.

Note the wording: “meet the needs of communities.” What the province is saying it will now do is develop Regional Energy Plans and the new process will “require energy planners and developers to work directly with municipalities to identify appropriate locations and site requirements.”

We’re not sure who the “energy planners” are but take this scenario: a regional energy plan for Ottawa and area is developed and the province says there must be a mix of power sources. Therefore, a wind power project, and guess what? There’s already one in process in North Gower-Richmond*, or countless other communities across Ontario near large urban centres, so, carry on! And we know that siting wind power projects has NOTHING to do with health or the environment and everything to do with a few willing landowners.

And the Liberal government’s continuing policy of forcing wind power projects on rural and small urban communities.

Premier Wynne confirmed this in an interview last Friday when she said Ontario is continuing its goal of securing the province’s clean energy future, and that siting decisions will be made for the “greater good.”

That means, too bad for you North Gower and Richmond. Hundreds of families, young children, people with existing health problems, young families with everything invested in their homes suddenly forced to live with a power project? Too bad for you: it’s for the “greater good.”

This announcement was the Ontario government at its most cynical.

Scott Stinson wrote in The National Post, referring to the government’s earlier decision to pay power developers even if we don’t need the power: “So now Ontario will pay wind generators for energy that it isn’t even using, produced by turbines in communities that didn’t want them, and were installed under a set of rules that it has since admitted was a mistake.” http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/06/02/scott-stinson-rural-communities-not-blow-away-by-changes-to-ontarios-green-energy-act/

Wainfleet Mayor April Jeffs today wrote a letter to Premier Wynne on behalf of the 20 some municipalities that met earlier this year and formed a working group. While Mr Chiarelli claims that the province is unable to cancel, or not proceed on, projects with FIT contracts, Mayor Jeffs reminds him that this is not true: “the recent court decision in the lawsuit brought by Trillium Power indicated that this concern does not apply to projects that have not received REA approvals. FIT contract holders have only been granted permission to enter a ‘complex regulatory process’ that might lead to approval to build a wind project. A FIT contract is not a guarantee of a REA approval.”

In other words, with all due respect, Minister, you are lying.

For more on this we invite you to read Parker Gallant’s excellent column at Wind Concerns Ontario, The truth, whole truth, so help me Ontario. http://freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/06/the-truth-whole-truth-so-help-me-ontario.html

Contact us at ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com 

Middlesex-Lambton, Listowel, Prince Edward County, Haldimand, West Lincoln, Bluewater, Kincardine, Collingwood… for a list of wind power projects pending go to ontario-wind-turbines.org