Audio and Transcript: John Laforet Speaks Out Urging Scarborough Councillors to Focus on the Real Issue and Stop Toronto Hydro
I have to say this meeting was bizarre. Turns out Paul Ainslie’s motion had absolutely nothing to do with wind turbines and any talk about wind turbines or Toronto Hydro would have one ruled out of order. This is after Ainslie spent hundreds of taxpayer dollars sending out flyers telling everyone how this deeply flawed motion did and would address Toronto Hydro. It was a pathetic display watching this all play and and him failing to defend our community. But we did our best, and rallied on. The motion passed, but is meaningless because it has been ruled to have nothing to do with anything. Residents want to stop Toronto Hydro, unfortunately the most recent vote Council took relating to Toronto Hydro’s project was in December 2009 and Paul Ainslie voted for offshore wind turbines and further research into it’s feasibility then. Below is the audio and transcript of my speech to Scarborough Community Council.
My name is John Laforet, I am the president of Wind Concerns Ontario, a group that represents forty two community based organizations in twenty seven counties in the Province. We’ve worked with local municipalities on primarily on land industrialization concerns. I think that (industrialization) is the word we’re using for the proxy debate. I know a lot about this. There are real concerns here. A small forest was cut down to advertise this motion as something that would have an impact on a particular proposal that a city owned agency is proposing in the lake. We all know that is why we’re here.
What I think frustrates me most about taking all of this time off work to come and speak about motions is they are all focusing on the Province and the Federal government, but the City owns the particular agency that currently proposing industrializing the lake. There is no two ways about that. The City currently holds a lease through a City owned agency for fifty square kilometers of lake bed. If Provincial Crown land is going to be industrialized off the Scarborough Bluffs, it will be done by the City. The City owns the project. The City owns the developer.
And even my own City Councillor in Ward 43, voted for industrialization targets, if we’re not allowed to say renewable energy, that require offshore wind to be installed. December 2009 it was called ‘The Power to Live Green’. That would have been a great debate to have residents at because that is one where we could have had an impact.
Unfortunately we’re here today discussing this, and I don’t see here the kind of wording that it’s going to take to impact the current proposal. This is a City of Toronto issue and anyone who is going to try to say that it’s the Province is mistaken. When you own the project, when you’ve endorsed the project at Council, it is a municipal issue and has to be treated as such.
Residents are furious.
I have never seen such a groundswell of opposition, and this is province wide. And it’s because of these projects and how communities are treated. The City of Toronto has been perusing offshore industrialization since 2003, where were you? The city approved funding for study of offshore industrialization in 2006. Where were you? In 2008 we found out about it by reading the newspaper.
Anyone who sits on the Toronto Atmospheric Fund voted to fund the research. Council voted to fund the research. We can blame the province all we want, but the Green Energy Act came five years after you guys started planning this thing. Residents want this solved. And you know we can run around with motions like this, you know if it passes, excellent, but we’ve already seen a ruling saying this has nothing to do with industrial wind power, so it’s completely meaningless as far as Toronto Hydro’s proposal goes and that to me is a deeply frustrating thing.
Thank you.
Tags: Ainslie Motion, Executive Committee Wind Moratorium, John Laforet Candidate, John Laforet Ward 43, John Laforet Wind Concerns Ontario, Paul Ainslie Motion, Paul Ainslie Motion to Council, Toronto Hydro Anemometer
