Kafkaesque: Opposing an industrial wind turbine project in Ontario
(Scroll down for updates)
Take a look at what happens when Ontarians try to oppose an industrial wind turbine project.
Laws, regulations, and processes seem to have eliminated every conceivable obstacle for the mad rush of the (economically useless, environmentally destructive) wind industrialization of rural Ontario. At the same time they effectively, undemocratically block wind project opponents at every turn. The Ontario Green Energy Act (GEA) and its quasi-judicial complaints department, the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) pitch opponents headlong into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
An example:
- The government gives the Proponent permission to undertake an industrial wind turbine construction project, which includes granting a special environmental permit that allows the Proponent to kill, harm, and harass a Victim or two.
- Locals launch an appeal on the grounds that the project would, amongst other troublesome consequences, cause serious and irreversible harm to the Victims.
- The appeal is heard by a Tribunal, which issues a very rare decision favouring the Victims, finding that the Proponent’s project will indeed cause serious and irreversible harm to two classes of Victims.
- The Tribunal orders a further hearing to consider the Proponent’s proposed mitigations of this serious and irreversible harm.
- In the meantime, however, the Proponent is legally entitled (and signals the intention) to go ahead and begin the project site pre-construction work, and in the process kill, harm, and harass Victims, without first having to table mitigation plans at the next Tribunal hearing (see 4 above).
- Lawyers for the Victims file a motion to have the Tribunal issue a stay of the Proponent’s pre-construction on-site activity associated with the special permit to kill, harm, and harass.
- The Tribunal dismisses the Victims’ motion, with reasons for its decision to be given at a later time.
- Lawyers for the Victims then appeal to a Divisional Court with a motion for a stay.
- The Divisional Court also dismisses the appeal because the Victims’ lawyers, through no fault of their own, are unable to establish specific grounds for said appeal, given that they are in the dark about the reasons for the Tribunal’s dismissal of the motion (see 7 above).
- The Victims’ lawyers are entitled to renew their Divisional Court motion (see 8 above), if and when they ever receive the reasons for the Tribunal’s dismissal decision (see 7 above).
- Meanwhile, the circle is complete, with the Proponent apparently free to go ahead and kill, harm, and harass the Victims, even though there is to be a future Tribunal hearing (see 4 above) at which the Proponent is supposed to make proposals for mitigating the killing, harming, and harassing that probably will already have taken place by then.
That is the saga thus far with respect to the battle between the Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County and the wind energy company wpd Canada Corporation.
The ERT appears to be nothing more than a Kafkaesque-Potemkin-kangaroo-emperor-with-no-clothes court.
The GEA and its companion, the ERT have allowed wind energy companies, eager to cash in on the Ontario Liberal government’s 20-year-guaranteed, above-market returns, to ride roughshod over democratic rights of people and municipalities. The kleptocratic subsidy scheme is footed by the taxpayers, and consumers’ electricity charges triple as a result.
Wind project opponents are spending inordinate amounts of time and money to fight a losing battle, the contest rigged from the start. For wind project opponents, the ERT appears to be nothing more than a Kafkaesque-Potemkin-kangaroo-emperor-with-no-clothes court.
The ERT gives people the illusion of offering democratic equality and justice before the law. In reality, it forces them to accept the industrialization of rural Ontario against their will, while depleting their wallets and spirit.
What’s at play here is just one aspect of the insidious implementation of the UN’s one-world-government Agenda 21, a blueprint for an anti-prosperity, anti-democratic sustainable development and wealth transfer movement. It uses the cudgel of the massive scientific deception of manmade climate change to clobber and guilt people into phony-green-energy submission. It has them running in circles, looking in vain for democracy and laws to protect their rights.
UPDATES
APRIL 4, 2016 – Wind developer wpd Canada Corporation indeed started clearing trees in preparation for wind turbine construction, despite the fact that the entire project was under appeal.
This work began in areas known to be habitat for the endangered Blandings Turtle; the power developer is continuing even though there are reports that milder weather has resulted in the turtles emerging early from their winter hibernation, and are at great risk.
Vegetation cleared in Prince Edward County Blanding’s Turtle wetland area, while the White Pines project was and still is under appeal. [Photo: APPEC]
…Sylvia Davis, lawyer for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, cited a ruling from over fifty years ago that only a panel of three judges could hear an appeal of this nature.
It became clear at that point that the motion would not be heard until after the legal matter of whether this was properly before the court had been dealt with, with a potentially unfavourable decision.
Rather than spend considerable time and money on legal wrangling the decision was made to withdraw our motion for a stay on all physical activity at the White Pines project site. The motion was withdrawn on consent of all parties and without costs.
We will immediately be going to the Tribunal to once again request a stay.
APRIL 8, 2016 – And then, mirabile dictu, the ERT granted a temporary stay!
Late this afternoon the Environmental Review Tribunal granted a temporary stay of WPD’s Renewable Energy Approval (REA). As a result of the stay all construction work at the project site has been brought to a halt. The Tribunal will schedule a written hearing at a later date to decide on the merits of a more permanent stay.
Bitter, cold (Part 3): Lives at risk, fiscal finagling, wind turbine torture
People spoke from the heart in front of the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park on a bitterly cold February 24 at the demonstration against the massive proliferation of useless industrial wind factories in the countryside. In the videos below, speakers decried the lack of protection for people and wildlife, and lambasted the government for its “green” energy-driven fiscal fiasco. A victim of industrial wind turbines told her story of shocking personal loss and the government’s complete indifference to her plight.
In the video below, Lorrie Gillis, chair of the Ontario Regional Wind Turbine Working Group, threw out challenges to the people of Toronto and to Ontario’s political parties:
So far government and courts have provided no protection for people wildlife or wildlife habitat. Instead of holding itself or the wind industry accountable for mismanagement and misinformation, Liberals simply rewrite the rules, claim to be unable to monitor compliance, deny the harm to families … continue to approve more turbines.
Toronto: keep waking up about what this Liberal provincial government is really about. NDP: you will see the results at election time if you continue to prop up this corrupt Liberal government. Until you NDPers acknowledge the harm being done to people and the economy by industrial wind turbines, you are no different than the LIberals! PCs: we need you not only to put a moratorium on future wind turbine projects but to address families who have already been harmed by existing projects and problems to come for those who are about to face wind installations … People’s lives are at stake!
CLICK ON PICTURE TO WATCH VIDEO (some wind noise)
In the video below, Parker Gallant, retired banker, energy critic, described the government’s toxic math and resultant tax grabs as reflected in people’s electricity bills:
Last year the cost of electricity went up by 16%, and that’s without all these new wind turbine projects coming up, so you can expect your electricity bill to keep going sky high.
Residents of Ontario have been conserving consistently since we’ve been asked to when the Liberals came to power. What that has done is forced the distribution companies to say “Hey, we’re losing revenue because people are conserving their electricity, so we need a rate increase.” So delivery rates continue to go up even though you conserve! It’s a weird, weird way to run the province!
CLICK ON PICTURE TO WATCH VIDEO (some wind noise)
In the video below, Norma Schmidt, registered nurse, industrial wind turbine victim spoke of the destruction of her way of life when she found herself engulfed on all sides by an Enbridge industrial wind factory:
I remember phoning Enbridge after I had many official complaints placed with the Ministry of the Environment and I asked them what they were going to do about all the [health] issues I was having, and they responded and I quote: “Absolutely nothing. We have a license from the government and we are going to continue to do what we have always done.” And they have indeed continued to torture me for over five years, and forced me to leave my home, my career, and the life I chose.
To our government, both federal and provincial, I say: shame, shame, shame! They have seen multiple peer-reviewed and published and unpublished research that states what we have been saying for years: industrial wind turbines cause harm to human health. And still they ignore the truth! The Ministry of the Environment willfully opposes anyone trying to protect themselves. When will this madness stop?
It is important to be here to educate the people of Toronto, to give them the facts and the truth. We have been here before and thrown out of the Legislature for speaking truth to lies. This Premier refused to meet with me when we were only a few feet apart. I wonder why? We will keep coming back again and again, until we get results.
Bitter, cold (Part 2): Predatory pilfering, plundering, and axing an eagle’s nest
The protesters, predominately rural residents of Ontario, who gathered in front of the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park on a bitterly cold February 24 to protest against the massive proliferation of useless industrial wind factories in the countryside, were cheered by the words of a number of speakers.
Sherri Lange, CEO, NA-PAW, North American Platform Against Wind Power, gave a brief overview of the failure of and waning support for wind power internationally, and commented on the Liberal government’s willful continuation of the billion dollar wind boondoggle here in Ontario:
It amounts to pilfering and plunder in a predatory manner, because they know what they are doing. And this is terrible, when you have a government that knows what it’s doing. Have you not all supplied them with information, about the problems with wind power? Yes, we have supplied them with that information, repeatedly, thousands, if not millions of times. And they persist. They have plans for 4,900 more of these… I don’t think so!
In the video below, a 13-year-old girl spoke with great passion and conviction about “the appalling actions of our provincial government” when it allowed NextEra Energy to cut down an active bald eagle’s nest last year in order to make way for an access road for an industrial wind turbine project:
I cannot believe this happened! This was a cowardly act by our provincial government, the MNR and the members of this huge business – NextEra Energy. They say that this is green energy? How, I ask you, is this green energy? Cutting down an active bald eagle nest? Might I add, on an old cottonwood tree, hundreds of years old and a very important part of our natural history? I don’t buy it! Our voices must be heard and they will be heard! The members of the Liberal government must know that wind energy is a fantasy, at best!
CLICK ON PICTURE TO WATCH VIDEO
Continue to Part 3 for text and video of more speakers.
Bitter, cold: anti-Wynne/wind turbine protest at Queen’s Park
Hundreds of people from rural Ontario piled into buses to Toronto, and on a freezing and windy February 24, gathered in front of the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park, and then at the Royal York Hotel, to protest against the Liberal’s Green Energy Act and to condemn Premier Kathleen Wynne’s continued cold-hearted proliferation of destructive, extremely harmful and utterly useless industrial wind turbines in the Ontario landscape. The monster machines have made life a special kind of hell for the people living in their midst, and represent a horrendous, possibly corrupt economic, environmental and fiscal Liberal boondoggle.
Urbanites should scroll down and take a good look at the faces of these brave people whose communities are being turned into industrial wind factories, and whose health, livelihood, quality of life, community harmony, wildlife, environment, and property values are being systematically destroyed.
Meanwhile, electricity costs are going through the roof and will continue to climb every time a useless, giant wind turbine, with its 20-year guarantee of above-market returns for the (often foreign) owners is erected. Everyone in Ontario except the wind turbine owners and their government enablers loses.
How much longer are we in Ontario going to tolerate this absolutely insane, toxic and corrupt situation?
Above: In front of the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park. A sign reads: “Ontario paid Americans to take $120 million worth of our electricity in December while Toronto froze” (when the heat and lights shut off during the huge ice storm).
Above: At Queen’s Park protesters braved freezing temperature and icy wind chill.
Above: At Queen’s Park protesters heard stories of personal tragedy, politicians’ promises, and news giving hope that the destructive tide of fake-green alternative energy scams such as wind power may be turning. Rural residents have been trying to make their voices and complaints heard for years, but the government has responded with silence, brush-offs, platitudes, and even more undemocratic regulations favouring wind companies. Urbanites must make an effort to research and become aware of the tragedy taking place in their backyard and join the demand for a moratorium on new wind projects and a halt to the costly and useless operations currently underway.
Above: At Queen’s Park a variety of speakers addressed the crowd. A report on what they said and promised to come in a future post.
Above: Following the speeches, the protesters marched from Queen’s Park ten blocks down University Avenue to demonstrate in front of the Royal York Hotel. They were kept safe from traffic by police mounted on bicycles.
Above: On the march down to the Royal York Hotel, protesters handed out leaflets to Toronto passersby. This one refers to the fact that each industrial wind turbine requires 800 tons of concrete for its base. Green, eh? Three turbines are planned to be built over an aquifer that supplies water to Walkerton, with its horrific, lethal, contaminated water tragedy of 2000 still fresh in the community’s memory. Protesters said that the government does not require that the concrete, which apparently contains heavy metals and toxic chemicals, be removed when the turbines are decommissioned.
Above: Arrival at the Royal York Hotel where a meeting of politicians, NGOs and Premier Wynne was reportedly taking place.
Above: Protesters bear witness in front of the Royal York Hotel.
Above: Edvard Munch’s The Scream effectively conveys the existential horror that rural Ontarions must endure under the relentless, implacable, seemingly unstoppable industrialization of the countryside.
Above: Landowners could simply have said “NO” to wind operators, but communities that declare themselves “Unwilling Hosts” carry no weight under the draconian, undemocratic dictates of the Green Energy Act which gives industrial wind turbines unprecedented rights.
Above: Industrial wind turbines despoil the natural beauty of the Ontario landscape, in addition to all the other evils the monster machines represent. This signs sums up what it means for tourism.
Above: A study, entitled ‘Wind Turbine Noise, Sleep Quality, and Symptoms of Inner Ear Problems’, funded by the University of Waterloo and the Ontario Ministry of Environment found statistically significant results for sleep, vertigo and tinnitus: “All relationships were found to be positive and statistically significant.” The Ontario Ministry of the Health and Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health do not seem to be overly troubled by this report. No health studies were done before industrial wind turbines began to infest rural Ontario.
Above: A call to action.
Continue to Part 2 for text and video of speakers.
There will be blood on the ground: permission to kill and do serious, irreversible harm
An Ontario Divisional Court overturned last year’s decision by the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal that stopped the construction of nine industrial wind turbines that would despoil the environmentally sensitive Ostrander Point, situated on provincially-owned Crown land in Prince Edward County. Last year, the Tribunal had revoked the approval, given by the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) in December 2012, on the basis that the Blanding’s turtle would suffer serious and irreversible harm if the development went ahead.
The MOE joined the project proponent, Gilead Power, in an appeal of the Tribunal’s ruling to the Ontario Divisional Court. “Three lawyers from the Ministry of Environment and the Attorney General’s office argued that their own MOE-appointed panel had erred,” said the Wellington Times.
With the Divisional Court’s decision on February 20, 2014, Gilead Power Corporation is presumably once again entitled, according to the permit it was originally granted on July 23, 2012 by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) under the Endangered Species Act, 2007 (ESA), “to ‘damage and destroy the habitat of Eastern Whip-poor-will’, as well as to ‘kill, harm, harass, capture, possess and transport’ both Blanding‟s turtle and Whip-poor-will, resulting from the development and operation of the Project” (from the Tribunal’s ruling, see Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County v. July 3, 2013).
Permits to kill, harm, harass, capture, possess and transport a species at risk or to damage and destroy its habitat are no longer issued to industrial wind turbine developers, but not for the reasons you may think.
Seven months ago the Ontario government almost completely undid its leash on the marauding weasels of wind. It gave up its power to monitor and regulate what the industrial wind turbine developers do to wildlife and the environment, making it even easier for the wind companies to do their dirty work, and harder than ever for concerned citizens and communities to assert their rights. New regulations granting more special rights to wind companies state in part:
Under the amended regulation, eligible proponents are automatically given an exemption provided they follow the prescribed rules. MNR has given up its power to say “no” to any project, regardless of the ecological importance of the area or the possibility there will be damaging cumulative impacts on the species at risk or its habitat.
Although proponents are generally required to document the measures they will take to minimize “adverse effects” on species, proponents almost never have to submit the documentation to MNR. MNR will therefore have no ability to know whether the permit-by-rule system is actually protecting species at risk.
The government’s own Environmental Commissioner has stated:
“By eliminating the permit process, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has shed its ability to say ‘no’ to a proposed activity, no matter how harmful it may be to an imperilled species,” says Commissioner Miller. “And since proponents don’t have to file any monitoring reports with the ministry, MNR will be blind to the effectiveness of its new rules.”
The Ontario Liberal government is wilfully enabling the destruction of the environment (not to mention people’s health, communities, property values, quality of life) for a fake-green technology that has proven to be useless and has already wasted billions of dollars. It’s enough to make you scream at the insanity, the government’s dereliction of fiduciary duty to the people, and the perversion of democracy in Ontario.
Ontario’s Team Agenda 21, Wynne’s approval from climate huckster Al Gore
On Thursday, November 21, 2013, it was on full public display – Ontario’s Team Agenda 21 (carbon trader Al Gore, Premier Kathleen Wynne, Environmental Defence Executive Director Tim Gray, Minister of the Environment Jim Bradley, Minster of Energy Bob Chiarelli), assembled in Toronto to congratulate itself and celebrate the closing of the last coal plant in Ontario, and to announce a new step further into the disastrous black hole that is the province’s energy program (outlaw the burning of coal altogether), and to be anointed and blessed by the high priest of man-made climate doom-and-gloom, Al Gore, who pronounced, “You’re doing a fantastic job”.
This was clearly not an Ontario government event. There was no Province of Ontario logo – neither on the podium, nor on the backdrop. The event was apparently conceived, organized and hosted by the unelected, unaccountable “green” activist NGO, Environmental Defence, an organization apparently funded in large part by foreign money.
Only Tim Gray, Kathleen Wynne and Al Gore spoke. The Ministers of Energy and the Environment each provided mute support throughout the event, as props perched stiffly on high chairs on the stage.
Tim Gray, Executive Director, Environmental Defence Fund explained the purpose of the gathering:
Today, UN talks in Warsaw enter their final hours. And we all know that…people will have largely lost hope that world leaders are going to…act together to fight climate change. And with that going on at an international level we thought it was even more important to showcase something real, something that’s being done here in Ontario, for proving that it can be done, that bold leadership on climate change is possible, and that today Ontario is poised to kick the coal habit forever…. [Applause]
Kathleen Wynne acknowledged the apparent and unelected leadership role that Environmental Defence enjoys in her government: “Your job is to push us, right? So I appreciate that…I want to thank Tim and everyone at Environmental Defence for putting together this fantastic event.”
As Parker Gallant has asked, who is really setting Ontario’s ruinous energy policies?
Premier Wynne:
Thank you very much, Tim, and thank you so much for your introduction, for the work you that you do. As you were just discussing: your job is to push us, right? So I appreciate that…I want to thank Tim and everyone at Environmental Defence for putting together this fantastic event. And I’m very pleased to be joined by our Minister of Energy, Bob Chiarelli, and our Minister of the Environment, Jim Bradley…Bob has shown tremendous leadership on energy issues in Ontario, and I’m very proud to have him in that role and Tim has been a passionate advocate for environmental issues since the 1980s and is helping to drive our issues in that portfolio…and Tim, it’s wonderful to have you here in that role…and it’s a huge honour to be here with you, Mr. Vice-President, thank you very much for being here.
Both Premier Wynne and Al Gore made sure that they listed every notable weather event they could think of as supposed proof-positive that man-made global warming is an indisputable fact (because the corrupt, disgraced IPCC said so). They also both managed to insult those good people who do not believe that the case for catastrophic man-made global warming has been proven (“their heads very firmly in the sand”, “deniers”), but who also know that climate does change, as it has done throughout the ages. Premier Wynne said:
The IPCC, a group that consists of thousands of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned us once again that our climate system is getting warmer. In fact, they say that it is unequivocal that our climate system is heating up. I think that there’s no denying that climate change is happening, even though some still have their heads very firmly in the sand and there is no denying that the urgency of the discussion of infrastructure construction, for example, across the country, is heightened by this reality…
If climate change is left unchecked it will lead to rising sea levels, more sweltering heat waves, more disappearing glaciers, and extreme weather events that could have potentially devastating consequences on our health, on our environment, our economy, and our lives. And, of course, there are aid agencies and global leaders saying that climate change has already contributed to humanitarian disasters like typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
So if we don’t move to reverse climate change now, we can see even more catastrophes around the globe. And we’ll have to deal with the aftermath of more events like the flooding that we experienced here in Toronto and in Calgary over the summer…
Both Wynne and Gore spoke about “our moral duty” (a duty which they themselves may very well have proven to have betrayed, by perpetuating and acting wilfully, opportunistically and recklessly on the basis of the hoax of anthropogenic global warming):
And I would contend it’s our moral duty to take action to protect our children, our grandchildren, and our fellow citizens. We’re lucky today to be in the presence of a man who’s been fighting on these fronts for many years.
Premier Wynne went on to announce that her government would be introducing legislation to make the burning of coal illegal. By closing all coal plants in Ontario, and by planning to enact a law to ban burning of coal, Premier Wynne is placing Ontario in grave danger, according to energy analyst and expert Tom Adams. He cites the example of Japan, which moved away from coal but kept its coal plants in good working order, so that they could be used if needed. Following the Fukishima disaster, they have now have proven to be critically important back-up sources of energy, and “are the reason that the lights are on in Japan.”
Al Gore spoke next, and took it upon himself, as the some sort of self-proclaimed global governance potentate, to thank Premier Wynne “on behalf of all around the world,” and, in so doing, reminding the investors in the room of “the nature the climate challenge and the opportunity it presents” (i.e. as enabled by the Green Energy Act, to fleece taxpayers/ratepayers with 20-year guaranteed above-market returns for useless industrial wind turbines). He said:
Thank you all for coming. And may I say, first of all Premier Kathleen Wynne, congratulations on your vision and leadership, thank you for the steps that you have taken and have announced today. I will elaborate in a moment as to why they are so significant for our world as a whole, but I have to say on behalf of all around the world – to understand the nature of the climate challenge and the opportunity it presents, ah, thank you, you’re doing a fantastic job. [Applause]
Then Gore, described by Ezra Levant as a “jet-setting, multiple-mansion-owning, twenty-times-normal-electrical-bill-consuming, oil and gas gazillionaire”, went on to play the moral courage card, with words that may very well prove to be his own undoing when more people begin to understand that he was a major force in helping to lead the world astray with the massive fraud of a fake planetary emergency – designed as rationale for a UN-directed breaching of national sovereignty, erosion of democracy, and a bid for world governance and enrichment – and that he profited enormously by doing it:
Years from now, depending upon the circumstances that we allow to unfold, the next generation will ask one of two questions. If they see the continuation of super storms, and deadly droughts, and tropical diseases ravaging temperate zones, and sea level rise, and the collapse of governance in places where the storms are too powerful and too frequent for people to recover and adapt to survive – if they do not have hope, if they look at their children and feel a sense of despair, they would be well-justified in asking of us, what were you thinking? Why did you not act?
But if they look around them and see a world in renewal…if they feel hope in their hearts and look at their children and feel definitely their future is going to be brighter still, they’ll look back and ask of us, how did you find the moral courage to change, to rise up, to act – and part of the answer will be: Ontario, Canada, led the way. [Applause]
If you have ever wondered what Agenda 21 looks like in a government, it was on full display at this event with all its hallmark features:
– an unelected, unaccountable, well-funded, extreme-eco NGO lobby group that is for all intents and purposes calling the shots, having played an important role in influencing the creation of draconian, anti-democratic, subsidy-heavy legislation, in this case the Green Energy Act, giving free rein to useless, supposedly “green” alternative energy sources such as industrial wind turbines that have cost Ontarians billions and untold grief to those forced to live with them;
– the invocation of the UN’s dishonest IPCC as a credible climate science authority;
– a government in such hopeless thrall to the fake premise of man-made global warming as the cause of climate change that it has lost all integrity, reason and duty of care to do what’s right for its people and the economy;
– and a venal, corrupt, profiteering, mendacious, self-righteous, manipulative celebrity to put his creepy brand of approval on the whole catastrophe.
Victims of a massive global warming fraud
So the Blanding’s Turtle must once again prove that it is in sufficient danger to warrant protection against industrial wind turbines from bestriding and destroying its unique, fragile habitat at Ostrander Point in Prince Edward County. Not only that, the proponents of the proposed wind factory, (Gilead Power) claim in their appeal of the recent decision of the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) protecting the turtle, that the reptile’s advocates, Prince Edward County Field Naturalists (PECFN), must “prove that the project would cause serious and irreversible harm to the turtle population province wide.” (Our emphasis.)
This is an interesting tack to take considering that the original decision of the ERT rejected such extrapolations, insisting on case-by-case assessment, when it came to previous Tribunal findings about the harmful effects of industrial wind turbine operations on human health!
But Gilead, and the Ministry of the Environment (MOE), which is also appealing the ERT decision, know they have the upper hand. Laws and rules, specially written so that all kinds of inconvenient obstacles have been swept aside to facilitate the wind industry’s free rein, are heavily weighted in favour of allowing industrial wind factories to be built practically anywhere, over the objections of unwilling hosts, damn the consequences. Two things worth considering here:
1. Let’s stop calling industrial wind factories ‘farms’ or ‘parks’ or ‘projects’ as if they complement a rural setting, as if they are benign, productive or beneficial. Make no mistake: these are sprawling industrial factories, useless ones, plonked ruthlessly and cold-bloodedly into the middle of working farms, and right beside homes, schools, and airports, and in pastoral landscapes and environmentally sensitive natural beauty.
Anyone who doubts this characterization of what’s going on should take a drive through Melanchton Township or the Chatham-Kent area, or any one of the locations marked on this map, and spend some time looking at and contemplating the uglification and utter ruination of the scenic countryside. The sight is unnerving. At times you’re surrounded 360˚ by the un-green white and grey monsters. You know that you’re in a vast industrial area that was once bucolic countryside. The eye tries in vain to focus on the fields, the trees, the sky, the clouds, but the constant, dizzying motion of the industrial behemoths engenders a disorienting, nervous tension. Your anxiety mounts as you see herons, raptors, the August flocks of gathering starlings flying perilously close to the turbines. You just want to get out of there. You flee even though you haven’t experienced the noise, the vibrations, the infrasound, the light flicker and other deleterious side effects of turbine operations relentlessly torturing rural residents whose homes are under seige by the monster machines.
2. How did we arrive at this crazy, insane situation where different ministries and arms of the Ontario government are fighting each other, reversing or trying to reverse each other’s decisions, each side’s lawyers and experts funded out of the same taxpayer purse? Where the Ministry of the Environment belies its name and grants permits for wind factories to be placed at designated Important Bird Areas, when the MOE knows they slice and dice birds and bats? Where Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health sticks her head in the sand and pretends that rural residents’ complaints of ill health caused by turbines are all in their heads? Where, despite overwhelming evidence that wind turbines are an environmental and billions-of-your-dollars economic disaster, the current Wynne government recklessly, heedlessly perpetuates the so-called ‘green‘ energy policies of her discredited, cowardly-slunk-away McGuinty predecessor? Where wind companies get a guaranteed, free-ride sinecure for a mind-boggling 20 years, paid for by you and your children, and in the process are free to blight the landscape, trample on property rights, and rob us of our democratic heritage, as allowed by the pernicious Green Energy Act?
Who and what is behind the forced imposition of useless industrial wind turbines on the people and their land, made possible by an unprecedented, legislated abrogation of democratic rights, resulting in the callous ruination of quality of life, homes, and property, wasting billions of our dollars, and hobbling the economy with sky-rocketing electricity costs and job losses?
.…one of the greatest scientific scandals in the history of the world on which billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money…squandered. (James Delingpole, Watermelons)
The shocking answer is that the Liberal government of Ontario is hell-bent on sacrificing the province’s people, land, wildlife, treasure, democracy and economic future on the altar of a false global warming god, brought to you courtesy of the United Nations (UN), the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s Agenda 21, the UN’s International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), propagandists like carbon trader Al Gore and name-caller David Suzuki, and many other dishonest, even disgraced-but-still-influential players in the ‘green’ and environmental movement – Climategate scientists, lobbyists, politicians, NGOs, charities, and not-for-profit organizations.
Man-made global warming has to this day not been scientifically proven, notwithstanding what the mass media take as a given, and what proselytizers and profiteers like Al Gore and David Suzuki and many others of their ilk want you to believe.
‘Climate change’…It’s not a genuine problem to be solved, but a handy excuse – with a fashionable green patina – to advance a particular social and political agenda under the cloak of ecological righteousness and scientific authority. (James Delingpole, Watermelons)
The UN’s ICLEI, for example, has probably infiltrated and signed up your community and provided your leaders with its cookie cutter blueprint for eroding your property rights, most likely without your knowledge or your vote. The UN’s Agenda 21, a master plan for a world government to control every aspect of your life under the guise of ‘saving the planet’, has been implemented under our noses for the last 21 years and has influenced, even bound our governments and nibbled away at our sovereignty. Scary stuff, and most of us are completely unaware of what is really going on. The fix is in, Big Money is being made and spent, a good part of it coming out of your pocket. The Blanding’s Turtle is not the only one in danger.
Increasingly when you read what is said and done by our governments in the name of ‘combatting climate change’, you have to pinch yourself in disbelief…wishful thinking and economically suicidal lunacy has managed to worm its way into twenty-first-century representative democracy. (James Delingpole, Watermelons)
Follow the links in this post, but also do your own research. Find out exactly how it has come to pass that Ontario has been invaded by useless, dangerous wind turbines that have wreaked economic, environmental and social disaster, and why the Wynne government is wilfully blind to the carnage, promising more of the same. If you want to trace the dots from the costly, destructive industrial wind turbines in your backyard back to the workings of a UN-led sinister, international web of global warming fraud and the malevolent, venal grab for money and domination, start with the very readable Watermelons: How Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children’s Future, by James Delingpole.
Three-armed bandits with special rights to attempt Toronto heist
Three-armed bandits with special rights. That’s how some Germans describe industrial wind turbines, according to the German news magazine Der Spiegel. And that label seems to be a universal truth. Wherever in the world you find wind turbines, you’ll also see misguided government legislation specially designed to remove inconvenient barriers for wind companies so they can have their way unimpeded over the democratic rights of tax- and ratepayers, the environmental protection of flora and fauna, and health and welfare of people. The invasive, financially rapacious scourge of wind turbines has continued almost completely unabated in Ontario, were it not for the Blanding’s turtle, which stopped one such industrial complex from being erected on Crown land in Prince Edward County.
To date no industrial wind factory has managed to gain a foothold in any large urban centre in Ontario, though not for lack of trying. Now, a new threat: a planned wind factory on the Leslie Street Spit, also known as Tommy Thomson Park, “Toronto’s Urban Wilderness“. The man-made park with its over 300 bird species, “wildflower meadows, cottonwood forests, coastal marshes, cobble beaches and sand dunes” is a favourite destination for nature-starved urban visitors, families on bikes and rollerblades, or hiking on foot equipped with bird watching scopes, cameras or fishing poles. The park is one of Ontario’s 70 designated Important Bird Areas, which, incredibly, have no legislated protection from industrial wind development.
Trying to create an urban-rural divide on this issue would miss the mark. Some people may be tempted to engage in wind turbine Schadenfreude, jubilating that the seemingly uncaring, Liberal-voting Toronto populace finally has its comeuppance, for once facing having to host the monster turbines themselves. Fact is that for a variety of reasons, most people, urban or not, who aren’t directly affected by the health and environmental evils of wind turbines, have been living in blissful ignorance. But once the uninformed dig deep and find out the sorry truth about the unprecedented wind energy scam that is being perpetrated by government held in thrall by foreign wind companies, they get it. When properly informed, urbanites and others are fully on board with the plight of rural wind turbine victims (the people, the communities, the birds, bats and other animals, the landscape), and enraged that government is wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on this useless, destructive technology.
Informed rural residents and urbanites can stand united with the same goal, namely that there should be no further wind energy development anywhere, and that the turbines that exist should be torn down. There is no urban-rural divide. There are only the odious, venal government and wind deceivers who would claim that their green is brilliant when the truth is it’s putting us all in the red for decades to come. In the process they’re destroying people’s lives and homes, human health, property values and the beautiful, restorative natural environments prized by all Ontarians, no matter where they happen to live.
Serious and irreversible harm
We know that wind energy is economically ruinous, a faux-green shell game that has no benefit whatsoever, except for the wind companies and their political enablers. And yet the only thing that was able to stop nine useless industrial wind turbines from invading an environmental and tourist treasure in Ontario was—a little reptile.
Thanks to evidence that “serious and irreversible harm” would befall Blanding’s turtle, a globally endangered species that is threatened in Ontario, on July 3, 2013 the Environmental Review Tribunal revoked the approval for a wind factory at Ostrander Point in Prince Edward County that had been issued by the Ministry of the Environment in December 2012.
It was the danger to the turtle and its habitat alone, not the distinct prospect of turbine-slaughter of other animals such as birds and bats, not the likelihood of turbine-construction related destruction of plant life, not the probability of turbine-syndrome harm to human health, not the insult of a useless project allowed to squat on the people’s Crown land (it is “the policy of the Ontario government to promote the use of Crown land for renewable energy projects”), not the shock of turbines licensed to impale a designated Important Bird Area (explicitly permitted by the government) that swayed the Tribunal in this case. Only the turtle’s predicament met the very rigorous legal test of “serious and irreversible harm”, and thus the threatened reptile managed to protect all the other potential wind turbine victims as well.
The Ostrander Point outcome is welcome news for “anti-wind” warriors, but not every appeal to the Tribunal will have a handy endangered or threatened turtle to help out. The harsh reality is that it is very difficult to meet “the statutory onus” of proof of harm. But the damage is all too real and proven for the scientists who study the adverse effects of wind turbines on birds, bats and the environment and for the people who have had to move out of their homes because nearby wind turbines have made them too ill to stay.
The Tribunal’s decision (see Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County, 03 Jul 2013) is recommended reading for anyone interested in how tortuous a path anti-wind turbine advocates must tread, even when the Ontario government’s wind power scheme has been thoroughly discredited as a scam and very costly sham.
Tundra swan migration may face wind turbine blades
Tundra swans stopping to rest and feed near Grand Bend, Ontario may face a phalanx of industrial wind turbines on their traditional migration habitat next March if the proposed Goshen Wind Energy Centre receives approval from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. This proposal falls under a regulation of the Environmental Protection Act.
In the 2011 video above, tundra swans feed on a corn stubble field located north of Greenway Road, east of Parkhill Creek, part of the area proposed for an industrial wind turbine factory.
That this proposal is being given any Ministry consideration begs the question: where is the environmental protection for one of Ontario’s most unique spectacles in nature when every March up to 15,000 tundra swans stop in the Grand Bend area to rest, feed and stage in preparation for continuing their epic journey to the western Arctic?
If the Goshen project receives approval, how will the swans manage to evade being sliced in two by the hundreds of gigantic wind turbines that would surround the bog where they rest, and that would dot the agricultural fields over which the birds must fly, land on and take off from in search of food? Would the proposed wind factory completely disrupt and destroy their traditional migration habitat? Would that be an acceptable price to pay for this so-called “green” renewable energy? Since we already know that wind energy is not green, not sustainable, and not useful, the Goshen proposal would appear to be doubly deplorable.
The public is invited to review and comment on the proposal. The Ministry’s website states:
This proposal has been posted for a 45 day public review and comment period starting June 26, 2013. If you have any questions, or would like to submit your comments, please do so by August 10, 2013 to the individual listed under “Contact”. Additionally, you may submit your comments on-line. All comments received prior to August 10, 2013 will be considered as part of the decision-making process by the Ministry of the Environment if they are submitted in writing or electronically using the form provided in this notice and reference EBR Registry number 011-9473.
For the option to submit a comment to the Ministry online, click here. The individual listed under “Contact” mentioned above is: Kristina Rudzki, Senior Project Evaluator, Ministry of the Environment, Operations Division, Environmental Approvals Branch, 2 St. Clair Avenue West, Floor 12A, Toronto Ontario M4V 1L5 , Phone: (416) 314-6802 , Toll Free Phone: (800) 461-6290.
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