Toronto Hydro Windfarm Meeting STACKED!

by John Laforet
posted on November 25th, 2008 at 22:33:12 pm

Supporters of wind farms from Downtown Toronto made their way out to the beautiful shores of Scarborough to support a wind farm in someone else’s backyard last night. Instead of taking public transit, they came on rented school busses. I recorded two busses compliments of the Toronto Environmental Alliance that came to stack the meeting and try to convince Toronto Hydro residents were in favour of a project that they are not. I watched one idle for five minutes. Over 1000 people descended on Sir Wilfred Laurier CI to express their views. It took hours, but Guildwood residents were able to get to the mics after the bussed in, and paid supporters were through with their speeches.

It was a disgusting display. With the greatest respect to the paid staff from a number of organizations that stacked the room and flooded the mics for the first part of the meeting — you’re voices are heard through your professional lobbying efforts and advocacy budgets. The meeting was for residents to express their views. Peter Tabuns – the MPP from Toronto Danforth and contender for the NDP leadership showed up to speak passionately in favour of the development and glad hand all the bussed in attendees.

Members of the Toronto Environmental Alliance’s paid staff took to the mics to read responses received through their website – but could not muster a single member of their organization from Scarborough to speak. Representatives from various union’s spoke in favour, while virtually all residents who spoke were opposed to the plan.

Toronto Hydro representatives sat on the stage and told their sad story about how this wasn’t actually about a windfarm, but just a test to see how much wind is there. No one bought that. They admitted to having no scientific proof that this site would be viable but clinged to the idea of building a windfarm off the Bluffs. They refused to rule out building more than sixty when Councillor Ainslie asked them to commit to that as a limit for the site. I have to admit, watching Councillor Ainslie ask someone to make a pledge on camera was a bit ironic and did remind me of his own pledge not to run.

Even with busses, and paid organizers working against the community, there were still more people in opposition to the project than those in favour.

The fact remains of sixty five sites the Ontario Power Authority thinks could be viable for offshore windfarm development the Scarborough Bluffs are not on the list. That means this site is not even the 65th best option for an offshore windfarm. Toronto Hydro’s response – it wasn’t an exhaustive report. Good one guys.

MY favourite laugh line of the Toronto Hydro presentation was that this would not cost tax payers anything and we would not pay for it. Really? Toronto Hydro is 100% owned by the City of Toronto, and all bills include the matter of this massive hydro debt. I wonder where they hide their money tree to pay for this one.

The wind mill at Pickering – which is right on the water operates at 18% capacity. This is over a five year period and means 82% of the time it is not functioning to the degree it should. How these guys think this project would be any different is beyond me.

What was presented to us last night was Toronto Hydro’s plan to force a windfarm on a site that they have no scientific reason to believe it will be viable. They refused to say what the minimum threshold would be for viability before the research is complete. They refused to allow independent access to monitor the data collection online. They also refused to limit the possible size of the project. They don’t know what it will cost or how much power it will create. They have no answer for why this site and not the nine other sites that the OPA recommended on Lake Ontario for offshore wind. They may was well have summed it up with “But I really wanna build a wind farm here”.

The most bizarre argument they kept making was “but Copenhagen has a wind farm just three km off hits harbour” – Copenhagen is about a fifth the size of Toronto, it’s wind farm is less than forty percent of the minimum size being discussed for this project, and just under 20% of Denmark’s power comes from wind farms and they are a major producer of wind turbines. – Besides that, Toronto and Copenhagen are quite similar I guess.

When someone asked if there is a city the size of Toronto with an offshore wind farm, the response was Copenhagen. When the questioner pointed out the size of the city in comparison to Toronto, he was told he was wrong and told that Cincinnati which was said to be “bigger than Toronto” (Cincinnati has a population of 330 000) and they are looking to build an offshore wind farm. A lot of us were a bit sick hearing about Copenhagen and one man took to the mic and pointed out that the Danish were also pioneers in pornography. This is something I would not know, and felt best not to google, so I will just throw it out there.

I am all for green energy, and like many people from Guildwood I am very concerned about the environment, but I would only support viable projects that will actually have an impact. If the City of Toronto wanted to get serious about climate change, they would focus on more projects involving solar thermal water heating. Currently the City has plans to work with two private companies – one of which is from Scarborough to install solar thermal water heaters on the roofs of some twenty municipal buildings in Toronto. Projects like this can actually work and ease pressure on the power grid. Enwave also has a great potential to help ease pressure off the grid, by utilizing the lake’s cold water to cool buildings in the downtown core.

Let’s work with homeowners to create a program that focuses on making solar thermal water heating units more affordable for individual family homes. If there was some kind of green mortgage plan similar to Dion’s idea and perhaps run through Toronto Hydro, that allowed individual home owners to borrow some or all of the cost of one of these units and pay it back through energy savings, we could go a long way to addressing global warming in our city. Sixty windmills put in a crappy location off the Bluffs is far too small, and too ineffective to make a real impact, and will simply make people feel good when they see pictures of them taken on sunny days.

Click here for some of the press from last night:

Below is more Information on the Toronto Environmental Alliance Busses:

This was posted by Richard Lawrence in the “Clean Energy Education Forum”
– Note the 116 Morningside bus runs from Kennedy Subway station and stops literally right in front of Sir Wilfred Laurier CI. Unlike TEA’s busses, it departs every five to ten minutes and does not idle. I guess you’d need to be from Guildwood to know that.

“Hi Everybody,
Just in case you are from the Toronto Area, there is a very important public meeting tonight concerning the proposed offshore wind project by Toronto Hydro. There are links to more information at the bottom of this email. Sign the petition to support the project here:

Toronto Environmental Alliance:

http://torontoenvironment.org/windmills”

Sarah Palin and the Turkey Massacre

by John Laforet
posted on November 23rd, 2008 at 22:52:59 pm

This may not be news a couple of days after the fact, but still worth sharing.

“It’s nice to get out and do something to promote a local business and to just participate in something that isn’t so heavy handed politics that invites criticism. Certainly we’ll probably invite criticism for even doing this too, but at least this was fun.” – Sarah Palin standing in front of dying turkeys.

Meat eaters in City’s rarely appreciate where meat truly comes from or the process it has go through to end up on our table. It is often said if cows could talk we would all be vegetarians – that is something I tend to believe myself. That being said, it is easy to grow up in the City and never really appreciate or understand the process involved in taking a live animal and making it food.

Thats before Sarah Palin burst onto the stage however. Many of us learned the term to “field dress” as it relates to hunting Moose in Alaska, as a result of Governor Palin. For approximately 2 million people (just over three times the population of her state), Governor Palin’s trip to a local Wasilla farm also showed vividly how a turkey goes from life on the farm to dinner on the table.

It is a bit disturbing – nearly as disturbing as the thought of this particular former Vice Presidential candidate within 100 yards of the red button. Take a look.

On Misleading Polls and Liberal Leadership

by John Laforet
posted on November 22nd, 2008 at 14:52:18 pm

I like to think I have some understanding of how polling works and what some of the challenges a pollster needs to address to tell a story as someone who has been a National Field Manager and worked on survey design and sample selection. Whenever I see a poll that doesn’t make sense, I look for ‘why’.

In the case of the Angus Reid polls, it is easy. Online samples are not representative of the population because they are self selecting and not random. It is unclear exactly what the profile of an internet vs. non interest user is. Therefore an online poll with a sample of 1200 people – is really just the opinion of those people and is not in any way representative of the Canadian population as a whole.

Now this poll that came out comparing Liberal support in a general election with Dion, Ignatieff, Rae and LeBlanc as leaders – it might as well have asked name recognition. It is far far too early to tell the impact any of these guys would have as leader because none of them have a national profile to even rival Dion’s yet.

Anyone who honestly believe Canadian’s want another go with Dion over any of the other guys should really think back to October 14th when Canadians sided with the bully.

I have no idea what impact any of the candidates would have as leader of our party, except that two may need an extra bus for their baggage – and one needs to become better known before we can win. That being said, if name recognition is your only problem, with the kind of issues LeBlanc is focusing on I suspect we could find ourselves looking at a majority government once that is solved.

I resent bad polling – and especially when it relates to voting intention because these decisions are too important to be toyed with by a bad poll.