Archive for March, 2009
George Smitherman Accuses Guildwood Residents of "Gamesmanship" – Paul Ainslie 'Amused' By Attacks
“Smitherman admitted strong opposition continues in Scarborough’s Guildwood area to Toronto Hydro testing for a possible wind farm offshore, but he complained residents practised “gamesmanship” against
a utility, which tried to present the process “in an honest and forthright way.”
There are always questions for which there are no answers, and repeating them enough creates “an impression of stonewalling,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of support for that wind farm. But you don’t really hear about that.”
…
“In an interview, Paul Ainslie, whose Scarborough East Ward 43 includes Guildwood, said he’s “amused” by the Liberal government’s attitude.
Guildwood homeowners, he said, are held up as Not In My Back Yard opponents of clean energy to justify its legislation, but Toronto Hydro, which was “grudging” in how in gave out information, doesn’t need municipal permission for a wind farm.”
Minister defends green energy plans in meeting – Scarborough Mirror, March 13 2009
Once again Minister Smitherman has decided to run his mouth about Scarborough residents without first getting virtually any of the facts available to him. I have not been able to find a single resident who wrote Mr. Smitherman in January who has yet to receieve a response – which suggests his staff aren’t even bothering to read our concerns as he legislates our rights away.
The only gamesmanship has been perpetuated by Joyce McLean and her associates on the fringe left. Does Smitherman actually believe it is ‘honest and forthright’ to purposely select a meeting location outside of the community in question, against the advice of local representatives because they believed the location was too small, and then have to cancel the meeting when too many people arrived? Does Minister Smitherman believe it was ‘honest and forthright’ when groups funded by the same sources as the project McLean is managing, stacked Guildwood’s community meeting with busloads of paid environmentalists to shout down opposition in our community? Does he believe it was ‘honest and forthright’ when McLean and Toronto Hydro Energy Services came up with an exclusionary registration process that denied hundreds of resident’s an opportunity to participate? Was it ‘honest and forthright’ when McLean opted not to speak about the class environmental assessment required for the anemomter at all at the meetings called as part of the process and instead disclosed seven days after the meeting that that was it’s purpose? Is it honest and forthright for McLean to mislead resident’s about the success (or utter failure) of her last wind experiment? Is refusing to provide the community with information on minimum wind thresholds ‘honest and forthright’? How about leasing the lake bed in July 2005 and waiting three years to tell the community about it, and then only doing so as part of a manditory comment period that MNR requires.How about denying me information that is considered public and will need to be made available at some point, until after the project has been approved.
The fact is Toronto Hydro Energy Services has made community participation absolutely impossible and angered so many residents there is no way this project can expect to recieve any community support whatsoever. If Smitherman wants to test this theory, I will gladly invite him door knocking with me to test the community pulse (and the waters for his Mayoral bid).
As far as gamesmenship goes, McLean has practiced more gamesmenship than anyone else in the process and she has single handedly destroyed any credibility Toronto Hydro Energy Services had in the eyes of residents. It’s too bad THES doesn’t care about their image, because a normal place would have pulled her off this project months ago and apologized for her utter disregard and lack of common sense.
If the Minister wants to see gamesmenship, he should keep ignoring and trashing Guildwood residents legitimate concern about his utter disregard for the environment and local democracy and wait to see our reaction the next time someone hands us a ballot. It won’t be pretty, I promise. Consider that of 6500 voters in Guildwood, 700 attended the last attempt at a meeting by Toronto Hydro and even using a randomized system for determining who spoke, not a single person rose in favour of the anemometer study.
Why? Because unlike Minister Smitherman, Ms. McLean, or Toronto Hydro Energy Services – Guildwood residents care about the environment and we know that nowhere in the world could anyone put a project this close to a shoreline. We know that Europe is waking up to the need to protect shorelines and has created nature conservation buffers mostly of 10k or more. We know that Environmental Assessments are important, even if Minister Smitherman doesn’t think so and we will oppose any project that doesn’t actually require one (regardless of what Ms. McLean will try and claim).
Richard Nixon, like George Smitherman cited a ‘silent majority’ when faced with an absolute crumbling of support for a drawn out battle of his. For Nixon it was Viet Nam, for Smitherman it’s Bill 150 – if passed as it is, it is certain to be the McGuinty Government’s political equivelent of a drawn out, unpopular war.
As for Paul Ainslie finding it ‘amusing’ that Minister Smitherman is attacking Guildwood residents and calling them NIMBY and our concerns ‘absurd’, I would say that he might be amused, but those of us who are actually talking about real issues aren’t. Councillor Ainslie would be well advised to take a break from his failed zoo take over and take a look at some of the more incoherent points he has made regarding the project that not only do not reflect the community position, but feed directly into the Minister’s communications assualt strategy on Guildwood. – Ainslie’s website has a number of them. Contrary to his comments about municipal involvement, the Councillor sits on the Toronto Atmospheric Fund and the City of Toronto Council – both of which are municipal bodies, each of which voted to fund this project, before it was made public to Guildwood residents. He is also well aware the City of Toronto owns Toronto Hydro and therefore it is inexcapably a municipal issue and one that he should have known about considerably longer than it’s been public to Guildwood residents.
As I said the day Premier McGuinty first attacked Scarborough residents ‘resident’s will not lay down’. He and Minister Smitherman can say whatever they’d like, the fact is steamrolling this bill through will have political concequences they don’t seem all that interested in and that’s fine, I guess. Further, Bill 150 will not make up for all the job losses that are piling up. February alone saw Ontario shed 35 000 jobs. This $700 million project Toronto Hydro proposes, according to McLean will produce just 200 ‘short term’ construction jobs. Ontario will probably lose more jobs between Bill 150′s introduction and royal assent than even this magic 50 000 jobs it is supposed to create somehow over three years. Don’t believe me? – Check back in May.
8 Comments »The Entrenched Corporate Irresponsibility of Toronto Hydro Energy Services
These guys represent to me the contaminated lake bed sediment at the bottom of the corporate responsibility barrel.
If it wasn’t bad enough they have purposely denied residents their right to participate in a consultation process on three occasions, before Minister Smitherman and the Premier McGuinty stepped in to take over trying to land the body blows on the community, they’re also now refusing to release what is very public information.
The Toronto Star said of Mr. Smitherman that “George Smitherman couldn’t find the political high road with a state-of-the-art GPS”. Well I’m not sure that Chris Tyrrell, Jack Simpson and Joyce McLean at Toronto Hydro Energy Services would even be capable of turning on the GPS to search for this mystery road none of them seems interested in traveling on.
The fact is there is not sufficient wind for the proposed site where Toronto Hydro Energy Services would like to construct an offshore wind project. They have demonstrated they have no concern about the possible environmental impacts it is sure to have on Ontario’s drinking water, lake ecology and certainly on shoreline erosion. They also don’t care what the community thinks, or what it will cost.
Joyce McLean failed miserably in trying to sell this ridiculous project. Her mixture of lies and misleading facts blew up so badly, residents came out of the woodwork to fight Toronto Hydro Energy Services off and stand up for the environment and the other things they, at Hydro, clearly don’t care about. By conscripting Minister Smitherman and Premier McGuinty to fight their battles for them after McLean failed to do so – she’s now put them in a situation where an automatic three seats in Toronto have now become competitive and there is no way Smitherman could realistically expect to be able to win a Mayor’s race after his commentary on the good people of Scarborough, to which even now – no apology has been made. So now that it has been recognized that Toronto Hydro’s “Director of Strategic Services” is more like the orchestrator of unmitigated public relations disasters – she’s itching for another fight. She chose to turn a very simple request from me into a gong show.
I asked for some public information last Monday, it’s Wednesday (eight business days later) and the back and forth continues, with the bureaucrat at the Ministry of Natural Resources who will eventually rubber stamp whatever BS McLean and Anne Mometer throw together and send their way, being cc’d on everything. I warned Hydro – starting an unnecessary fight would result in a public complaint on my part.
I’ve asked Chris Tyrrell, the President of Toronto Hydro Energy Services to step in and provide some adult supervision to Ms. McLean as she continues to put Toronto Hydro Energy Services into yet another totally indefensible position. I certainly hope he demonstrates being in possession of an ounce of integrity and common sense that he may be able to share with McLean to prevent another embarrassing round that Toronto Hydro Energy Services has no hope of winning.
How can anyone expect taking away community’s rights to opposition is a good thing when as it is, the organizations that are so hard done by are already denying information they are legally obligated to release. Pending Tyrrell’s response, or lack there of, I will disclose the emails that have gone back and forth for context.
Developing.
1 Comment »Toronto Observer: Green energy bill angers Guildwood residents
The Toronto Observer’s Tevy Pilc wrote a piece on the impacts of the proposed Green Energy Act on Scarborough Bluffs residents. As with all Green Energy Act and Toronto Hydro Energy Services stuff related to the proposed offshore wind farm in Scarborough – I have opted to post it here.
The Toronto Observer serves the communities of East Scarborough communities including Guildwood. For their website click here. http://www.torontoobserver.ca
Green energy bill angers Guildwood residents
Residents of Guildwood may be seeing red after the release of Ontario’s new Green Energy Act. The act may reduce the input they have with the province in negotiating environmental developments in the area.
Unveiled on Feb. 23, the act will introduce fixed prices for electricity generated from renewable sources. It will also establish efficiency standards for appliances and require homeowners to conduct energy audits before selling their houses.
“The city doesn’t have any control over these issues,” said Ward 43 councillor Paul Ainslie, who supports the act environmentally but is concerned for his residents’ say in the matter.
Some Guildwood residents like John Laforet, an activist with the Save theToronto Bluffs group, say they are displeased with the act.
Laforet called it “one of the most undemocratic pieces of legislature [sic] in the past decades.”
“These proposed projects are unprecedented based on other world examples of offshore wind projects. Ontario has some of the weakest legislation when it comes to calculating the adverse effects of these projects that require environmental assessments, which the province wants to remove,” Laforet says.
One of the issues regards the Scarborough Bluffs, where the province andToronto Hydro have proposed projects for wind turbine systems. Ainslie says the bluffs are under provincial jurisdiction, so it’s already difficult to get much out of negotiations, especially with Toronto Hydro, which normally relays that information to residents.
“Toronto Hydro says it wants a public process. It wants feedback if residents want an anemometer for wind testing, not wind turbines. If the testing is successful, that will lead to an environmental assessment for wind turbines, which my residents don’t want,” said Ainslie. “But now the province is saying they want wind turbines in Scarborough, and if wind testing works, they can go straight to wind turbines and skip the environmental assessment..”
Ainslie said his residents get a bad rap in Toronto because the bluffs are in his ward as are most of the protesters against the turbines.
“We have to be transparent about this process. Residents are concerned about how the process works regarding all the development, and now the province comes out with this like-it-or-lump-it attitude.
Ainslie said he found it funny when energy minister George Smitherman said that the act is designed to stop NIMBYs like his residents when it didn’t really involve them. “I’ve always said we have residents who are for it, against it, but mostly those who don’t know much about what’s going on.”
Ainslie says some of the concerns his residents have expressed include effects on property values, migratory birds, monarch butterflies, bats, the aesthetics of the turbines and economics surrounding their building.
Laforet said he agrees with the councillor on the lack of awareness of the issues, stressing residents should read the bill because it will have a major impact on their ability to take part in decision-making.
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