Scarborough Standing Up and Standing Strong
Rest of Toronto – you’ve gone and done it. Once again the rest of Toronto has come up with a ‘great’ plan for Scarborough, and this time instead of being the good neighbour, Scarborough is saying no. No we won’t tolerate our rights being taken away, no we won’t let you do untold damage to our natural environment, and no we won’t allow you and your bought and paid for supporters to tell us what to think. We will stand up and we will stand strong.
It started in Guildwood when Toronto Hydro Energy Services allowed folks who rely on grants to stay alive (and receive them from folks with a clear bias in favour of Toronto Hydro) to stack the meeting on a Class B Environmental Assessment and deny residents their right to participate. It turned a serious process into a circus and turned community concern into community action.
Franz Hartmann – the Executive Director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance was front and centre as were a number of other folks who know so little about Scarborough they couldn’t even read a bus schedule to see that their school buses were unnecessary as the TTC does exactly the same route they chose to take. He still defends his actions, even if Toronto Hydro recognizes how inappropriate it was. Hartmann made himself and his supporters the butt of many jokes about how little one can know about Scarborough while trying to get in the middle of an issue on the ground.
Toronto Hydro, their allies and hangers on have been totally dishonest in their representation of the merits of the project, it’s impacts and the sad thing is each of these organizations and people behind it survive on public money that they are using to attack members of the public.
I’ve lost a lot of respect for a number of organizations throughout this process.
Toronto Hydro is one organization I will always look at with mistrust due to the completely irresponsible and illegal approach they’ve taken so far, as a means to push this project forward.
The City of Toronto as defined as Toronto City Council is one that I will have great difficulty believing has the best interests of Scarborough at heart, considering it is they who are pretending not to see what Toronto Hydro is doing to this section of the City.
The Ontario Liberal Party – a party I’ve been involved in for years, but appears more interested in who donates than what is best for the Province and it’s people.
The Toronto Environmental Alliance and the David Suzuki Foundation each had a moral obligation to stand up and protect our great lakes, defend the Scarborough Bluffs – one of Lake Ontario’s most defining geological features against the unknown, and unstudied risks of a possible wind farm. Instead they listened to their biased financial contributors (some of whom also are funding the project TEA is supporting), and who have a financial interest in proceeding without the protect studies and tests. For it’s part the Toronto Environmental Alliance tried to silence those of us who were forced to make a very difficult decision and oppose a renewable energy protect.
The Premier – Dalton McGuinty. Someone I will not be able to vote for in 2011. Simply put, he trashed my community, and is sitting back and ignoring our concerns while those who are in favour of what is about to happen fill his re-election coffers.
The Deputy Premier – George Smitherman. Simply a disgrace to this province. How anyone can listen to anything he has to say and take it seriously is beyond me. He damages the view of government each time he opens his mouth. I used to think he could be a neat mayor.
Local Elected Officials. Both provincial and municipal representatives have a responsibility here. Neither have used even a fraction of the tools in their toolbox to help. Both have window dressed instead. As someone who has been involved in politics, I know how it works. I know what the limits are and neither Paul Ainslie or Margarett Best have done anywhere near what they could, if they chose to.
We’re still greener than any other part of Toronto. We have the highest rate of waste diversion, we’ve protected more parkland per capita than anywhere else and our former City’s symbols, whether the Civic Centre, the Flag or even our name are based on that amazing, awe inspiring 14 kilometre stretch of shoreline that is so unique on this lake.
Like Elizabeth Simcoe, the wife of Upper Canada’s first Lt. Governor, many of us have loved the bluffs since our first sighting of them. We will defend them, as countless generations going back to Canada’s first people’s who lived in their watershed and along their cliffs have dating back 8000 years. I wrote about Elizabeth Simcoe and Sir John Graves Simcoe in August. Here is the link to that. Scarborough Mirror: Scarborough has special connection to Simcoe Day
Scarborough residents have allowed a lot of NIMBY politics downtown see us host aspects of infrastructure that others didn’t want. We did so quietly and with the glass half full approach. But this is something many of us simply cannot stomach. Allowing someone to do untold damage to the Bluffs, the very core of Scarborough’s identity as a city is simply intolerable.
Toronto Hydro must know there could be a devastating impact on the fish habitat the Toronto Region Conservation Authority started rebuilding under the old City of Scarborough. They must know there could be severe impacts on shoreline erosion and the Bluffs, on the birds and bats that live and migrate through the area. They must know there could be real health concerns for fish, humans and anyone else that interacts with the lake.
Why do I say this? Because something has them so scared they refuse to do a full environmental assessment to discredit me and the thousands of other Scarborough residents who are digging in and fighting what is quickly becoming an epic battle to protect our lake, and generations of nature conservation from the irresponsible destruction that comes when a few downtown politicians and some irresponsible executives get together and decide to do something this stupid.
We’re standing up, we’re standing strong and getting stronger as we await the next number of battles with Toronto Hydro Energy Services and anyone else who is so mindless to think there are not consequences from something like this.
I have never been more proud to be from Scarborough or Guildwood as I am now. Standing up with residents of my community and standing strong against moneyed interests who frankly don’t care what happens to us, is something anyone involved can and should be proud of.
One thing is for sure, with two elections in the next two years or so, folks who support this idea can also expect some electoral consequences as well.
Tags: AECOM, Anemometer, Chris Tyrrell, Dalton McGuinty, East Point Anemometer, Franz Hartmann, George Smitherman, Guildwood, Jack Simpson, Joyce McLean, Ontario Liberal Party, Scarborough, Scarborough Wind Farm, Toronto Hydro Energy Services
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