What a remarkable display of democracy in action. Residents came together to talk about an issue important to their community, share knowledge, concerns and solutions to what has become a serious problem. Our elected officials may not listen, Toronto Hydro may continue to ignore it’s legal obligations and the Government of Ontario may be fixing to limit our right to participate in decision making – as Ontarians have been allowed to for generations, but Guildwood residents are holding strong.

The cafeteria at the local high school was turned into a meeting place where residents could drop in, go to different stations and talk to others who’d been researching specific issues for some time. What was most interesting was to see the number of residents who came out to talk to members of Save the Toronto Bluffs, and then speak with each other in the middle of the room to evaluate the information they had received and to share their concerns with others. It turned into an excellent opportunity for neighbours to see friends they may not have seen during all the snow, to talk about our community, to connect with others, but most of all – to strengthen their resolve to keep fighting this proposal.

I was thrilled to meet so many of the people I’ve been emailing back and forth with, and have the opportunity to share some of the more candid tales of this whole process, including commentary of how the actions of our opponents both created and fed a movement that would have otherwise been difficult to get off the ground.

It was a great event, one that saw everyone treated with respect, honest words spoken, and a robust conversation had. Even for a community with such vast variety of concerns what became clear is that engaging in dialogue is the only way issues like this can be understood and addressed.

And finally – on a more personal note, I was thankful to see so many members of the Guildwood community I’ve grown up knowing, meeting the individuals who’ve written me and shared their stories, concerns and kind words. Meetings like this are great for reminding those who devote their time to causes, what the stakes really are, and who it really impacts. I will take the positive energy from Sunday’s meeting and use it as my personal ‘renewable energy source’ to keep up my efforts, along with the thousands of Guildwood residents whose position I share, and together we will stop Toronto Hydro and can only hope Minister Smitherman recognizes how wrong this project was from the start.

The Ministry of Natural Resources now holds all the information they need to decline Toronto Hydro’s application. It was clear to everyone it failed to meet the legal requirements for such an application, but as we’ve seen, the truth, decency and law don’t appear to matter to these folks. – I know these values are shared by the members of the Ontario Public Service, and it is my hope they will find the courage to tell Toronto Hydro that they cannot choose not to comply with environmental laws (as they are attempting to do).

Members of Save the Toronto Bluffs are stepping up to do what Toronto Hydro was legally obligated to and failed to do as part of the Class B Environmental Assessment. We will be providing honest and accurate information to members of a community legally defined as ‘affected public’ under Environmental Assessment legislation. The fact that Joyce McLean – a former NDP partisan and political staffer at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, in addition to being the former Greenpeace Great Lakes Campaigner, either couldn’t or chose not to find her way through the legal requirements of an environmental assessment process is alarming to say the least. Especially considering she had the help of Anne Mometer at AECOM to help her out.

The irresponsibility of Toronto Hydro’s actions has caused great concern in the community and left residents without answers to very legitimate questions that should have been answer, had Toronto Hydro Energy Services properly completed the legal requirements of the Class B Environmental Assessment, which they failed to. 

Once again, I’d like to invite all Guildwood residents to come out to our drop in meeting, share your concerns and ask any questions you may have about what is going on. I know everyone involved in this meeting is hopeful that we’ll be able to educate each other about the valid concerns and process issues. 

Below is the text from the article:

Wind power information meeting slated

Save the Toronto Bluffs group to host event at Scarborough high school

By DANIELLE MILLEY

Fed up after two information meetings where they were able to “find out nothing,” concerned Guildwood residents are holding their own information meeting about wind power.Jacques Lupien is one of the organizers of the meeting, which takes place Sunday, March 29 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute on Guildwood Parkway.

He said the two information meetings held by Toronto Hydro regarding the installation of a wind testing device, called an anemometer, off the coast of the Scarborough Bluffs at Guildwood have not answered residents’ questions or addressed their concerns.

“They had a meeting at which we’d been able to find out nothing,” Lupien said.

After the Jan. 20 meeting, the Save the Toronto Bluffs group began planning for its own meeting.

Toronto Hydro attempted to hold its first information meeting Oct. 27, but it underestimated the community interest and had to reschedule as the room wouldn’t accommodate all those in attendance. The second meeting took place Nov. 24 with more than 1,000 people attending, including a lot of supporters of the project from other areas of the city.

Local residents complained the meeting was hijacked so a third meeting was held for local residents in January.

But residents still weren’t satisfied as questions around the economic impact and specifics of a wind farm remained unanswered.

So Lupien and others, including John Laforet, began planning their own community meeting.

“A lot of Guildwood residents are frustrated at the lack of information Toronto Hydro is providing,” Laforet said. “We’re in a position to share legitimate information with those who have questions.

“It’s members of the community taking a leadership role to share information with other members of the community.”

He said they’ve gathered information from government and industry sources around the world, such as the European Wind Energy Association and Greenpeace, about health and environmental impacts, for example.

At its meetings, Toronto Hydro officials pointed out they couldn’t answer some questions as they are still at the investigation stage to see if this is a viable site and it would do further environmental and economic studies depending on the results of the anemometer. If Toronto Hydro’s application to the Ministry of Natural Resources to conduct wind testing is approved, the anemometer would be installed this summer at a cost of $1 million. The research phase would take two years.

If a wind farm is erected there would be up to 60 turbines installed two to four kilometres offshore from Ajax to the Leslie Street Spit. This has many Guildwood residents concerned.

“It’s a huge threat to our lives. Those of us who live near Lake Ontario will be affected by this,” Lupien said.

“It’s a huge threat to health and environment.”

Lupien said members of the group, including doctors and engineers, have been doing extensive research about wind farms in other areas in order to provide those who attend Sunday’s meeting with information.

Lupien said the format will be different than the Toronto Hydro meetings as it will take place in the cafeteria with different stations set up where people can find information on specific topics such as the Green Energy Act or the anemometer.

While much of the information has been gleaned from the Internet, which Lupien admits isn’t always the most reliable source, much of the research has come from independent researchers and studies.

“We’ve gone deep into this,” he said.

Laforet said if there is something they don’t know, they’ll say so.

“If someone stumps us we’ll take their questions and go back and research the answer,” he said.

Lupien said this is also an opportunity for the Save the Toronto Bluffs group, which has 1,000 member, to recruit more concerned individuals. “

The link to the Scarborough Mirror Article ‘Wind Power Information Meeting Slated‘ can be found here.

For some background, this was the third attempt at a community meeting for Guildwood residents, and I have to say was executed better than the previous two attempts. In fairness, the bar wasn’t high considering the first meeting had to be cancelled due to poor site selection, and the second meeting was stacked by grant receiving supporters of Toronto Hydro who blocked residents rights to speak and shouted them down when they finally got the opportunity to. There were still problems with tonight’s format, all of which serious, some of which may have legal implications. 

Toronto Hydro Energy Services is an unregulated subsidiary of Toronto Hydro. Toronto Hydro has one shareholder — the City of Toronto. The City of Toronto has 2.5 million share holders who have rights. The voters. Toronto Hydro is considered a ‘local board’ of the City and therefore must follow certain provisions of the City of Toronto Act or ‘a Stronger Toronto for a Stronger Ontario Act, 2005′. One of those provisions is to hold public meetings. That means doors open. Anyone can attend. I’m sure they can still restrict who speaks, just like City Council can restrict who speaks in the Chamber, but we’re all allowed to be in the Chamber. Legally for the purposes of a meeting like this restricting attendance is sketchy at best, illegal at worst. But they still did. 

I spoke to a number of residents and found that all residents who received a notice received one dated January 2nd 2009. The notice had a pin number required to register (something you could only do during office hours) and one had to register by January 15th to attend the January 20th meeting. You could also only register two people. I only spoke to one resident who received a notice  before January 15th, they had received it on January 13th and registered successfully. Most residents received the notice after and had to call Toronto Hydro for special permission to attend. There was no public notice to let residents know this was an option.

Chris Tyrrell, President of Toronto Hydro Energy Services, apologised for the error. It was a bit of an empty ‘sorry’ considering it was caused by a ridiculous process that is outside the law that governs meetings and likely caused many residents who either didn’t receive or didn’t read the unaddressed ad mail Toronto Hydro sent to them, not to attend the meeting. That means their voices weren’t heard. The National Post is nuts if they think 900 people were in that auditorium. It has a capacity of 960 and there were significantly more than 60 empty seats, even before the Hydro folks offended people, causing walk outs.

I listened to two and a half hours of questions. Not a single resident asked a question or made a comment that spoke remotely favourably of this project. If the slant of questions were considered votes, this would have been unanimous opposition. Toronto Hydro took a bruising from residents. Over the course of the evening the ridiculous non-answers of Toronto Hydro Energy Services staff, namely Jack Simpson, VP Generation, and Joyce McLean, Director of Strategic Issues dodged just about everything they were asked. I will have videos of some of this to follow.

Residents were only given one minute to ask questions, and frustration with the process got so bad on a number of occasions that residents protests temporarily took over the meeting. McLean and Simpson’s answers resulted in groans, mocking cat calls and other signs that residents simply could not believe what they were saying. Hundreds of residents left in frustration as the meeting continued on. 

The answer to every question relating to what would constitute a viable project or requests for information about the wind turbine at the EX or the Pickering turbine were met with responses along the lines of ‘that information is commercially sensitive’. Read: so bad, we don’t want to go there. Although if we’re talking about bird deaths, Toronto Hydro can go there to defend turbines. They can also be used to cite experience with these types of projects. When asked if the data they plan on collecting would be publicly available, the answer was no. Because it is commercially sensitive. How you ask? Well that is a good question. Considering Toronto Hydro has already leased the lake bed they plan to put the industrial wind turbine station on, and only they can use their data for financing or throw up these turbines on that site. It’s an answer to a question for a guy who just doesn’t know what to say and is defending a project without merit. Last night that was the story of Jack Simpson. 

McLean for her part, attacked research that suggests there is a medical condition called “Wind Turbine Syndrome” that affects residents who live near these industrial applications. She said the data and the forthcoming book, written by a Doctor isn’t valid because it hasn’t been peer reviewed. I’m sure Joyce’s point is really valid for all of those folks living near wind turbines all over North America with similar symptoms… According to Toronto Hydro, their Anemometer data won’t be peer reviewed either. It’s commercially sensitive, remember? Presumably they will try and convince us it’s valid though.  She also minimized the bird and bat deaths caused by these things and tried to blame buildings for being the real bird killing culprit. I’m sure Guildwood residents would oppose building buildings off the bluffs too. 

Toronto Hydro also tried to suggest that the portion of the bluffs under the water is somehow separate from the bluffs itself. In fact this is the erosion materials from the cliff face and the base of the whole formation. They are one. In fact, I would challenge Jack Simpson who disagrees on this point to get a Geologist to test the materials on the sand bar and compare them to the cliff face. Short of being wet, they are the same. Drilling into one, will cause vibrations and could cause major erosion. I’m not an engineer, but not being an idiot seems like enough to know this will be the case. 

Toronto Hydro continues to use deceptive claims when trying to sell the industrial wind turbines we’re not allowed to talk about at meetings. The presentation focused on Denmark’s offshore projects and the fact that Germany has 23 000 megawatts of installed wind energy. Can anyone guess how many offshore wind farms Germany has? – Zero. How many urban wind farms? – Zero. Ok. Moving on to Denmark… Denmark has both, but how many are in residential areas? – Zero. None. Not One. Anywhere in the world is there a wind project in front of a cliff? Nope. No where. This is a completely new idea. 

Here is another fun piece of trivia: How many full environmental assessments have actually been done before wind turbine projects have been built in Ontario? HINT: There have been 17 wind projects. Answer? Are you sure you want it? Here goes: Zero. Who needs an environmental assessment when the project has ‘green’ in the title. 

Toronto Hydro also likes to talk about coal power and McGuinty’s promise to close all coal power plants by 2014. – Not only will I predict this won’t happen on time, and should McGuinty retire or be defeated, it will probably be shelved all together. Even with 55 000 wind turbines installed world wide, not a single coal power plant has been closed because of it. It’s another bad argument. 

I have to say, I was disheartened watching this process play out. It was clear watching the Toronto Hydro Energy Services folks and the local municipal representation that they are sitting there, going through the motions and just waiting to go to Natural Resources to say “see, we consulted”. They did a good job of sitting there, listening and ignoring. The note taker wouldn’t even copy any critical statements verbatim, the only verbatim commentary recorded were the remarks by Hydro officials. Anyone interested in producing a transcript can use www.laforet.ca‘s unedited footage of the meeting, but would need to contact me soon so an unedited copy is kept for that purpose.

I strongly believe residents have a right to control the destiny of their communities through collaboration and local democracy. This a core belief I have as it relates to the role of citizens in a democracy. Any process or decision that forces members of a community to organize and fight their elected officials who are complacent or working against them is the sign of real trouble. Guildwood has a Councillor (Paul Ainslie) who slept through this process early on and has forced residents to fight like hell to stop this. He sits on the Toronto Atmospheric Fund which cut a cheque for $100 000 for this project. He sits on Toronto City Council that cut a cheque for $150 000 for this project. How did residents of Ward 43 find out this was even under consideration? Not from their elected official who would have been involved in the process that saw these sums of money approved. Twice. They heard about it from Roy Wright. Roy is a Guildwood resident with unprecedented levels of energy and a deeper commitment to the environment and nature than most. He has spent much of his time in Guildwood fighting to preserve the natural beach below his home. He has probably talked to thousands of people and organized his neighbours. Together they got every one’s attention. Roy should be commended, but he should not have had to do all that he has to ensure his community is given the opportunity to be involved in the decision making process. He and his neighbours should have been at the table from day one, and an integral part of any decision making process. Listening to our communities shouldn’t be another step, but THE step that decides what does and does not happen. Especially for projects like this that are hardly ‘musts’.

Over the coming days, I will release a number of interviews, and videos from tonight’s meeting. I don’t have a timeline on this, but there should be some news on this front in a couple of days. I don’t expect anyone in the traditional media will have the courage to call Hydro out on this process or the overwhelming opposition the idea has received (none did last time), and therefore I will devote a significant amount of my time to allowing residents voices to speak for themselves so their voices can be heard above the elected officials who won’t fight for them downtown and above Toronto Hydro Energy Services attempts to quell their voices. 

Agreat website is http://www.savethetorontobluffs.com/ It is maintained by a strong group of Guildwood residents who are standing up for their community and want their voices heard. Take a look.

The first meeting Toronto Hydro scheduled was sited in a church well outside of Guildwood on a rainy night, against the advice of the local Councillor. When twice capacity showed up they were turned away and the meeting was re-scheduled. 

The second meeting was held in Guildwood but was stacked with bussed in paid organizers from organizations that not only had received grants, but also organizations that Toronto Hydro’s project page encourages individuals who are interesting in knowing more about the project and wind power to visit. Those paid organizers hogged the mics and gave impassioned speeches in favour of wind energy, while their diesel school buses idled outside (buses that literally mirrored a popular bus route from Kennedy Subway station). Guildwood residents who could not stand in line for over two hours, weren’t heard because of these individuals and Peter Tabuns who thought it was a campaign event for those interested in being the leader of the third party blocked them.

This third meeting is intended for Guildwood residents. It is being held on January 20th 2009 at Sir Wilfrid Laurier CI. The same site as before. The difference this time is residents need to pre-register five days before the meeting to attend. Easy enough right? Except Guildwood residents also need to supply a pin number they were to receive as unaddressed admail from Toronto Hydro. As of January 16th – a day after the last day to register some residents confirmed to me they still have not received their notices. Even those who did receieve a notice will only be allowed to register two attendees. This is problematic for multi generational families, families with adult children at home and homes with multiple families living at one address. Those who have not registered will not be allowed to enter, regardless of residency. 

Toronto Hydro has said they will extend the time for residents to register, and that is fantastic, but they have not conveyed that message through the media, no press release has been issued to recognize their error and any residents who did not receive a notice by Friday likely won’t until Monday, making it still realistically too late for them to register to attend even if they knew to call and try anyway.

Some will defend Toronto Hydro’s decision to restrict access to the meeting only to residents of Guildwood. This is not a position I would defend. I would defend Toronto Hydro if they chose to allow an open meeting, but only allowed Guildwood residents with valid ID to put questions on the floor. The City of Toronto Act, appears to like my position better than Toronto Hydro’s too. 

On the City’s website “Open and closed meetings of City Council, its Committees and local boards” the City states: “Generally, the City and its local boards are required by law to give notice and hold all meetings in public.” It goes on to recognize Toronto Hydro as a local board, provides an investigation process and then goes on to say the investigation process does not apply to boards like Toronto Hydro.  Toronto Hydro’s reason for closing the meeting does not meet any of the provisions provided on the City of Toronto website.

Is a meeting public if notices are never received and people are barred from entry if they do not follow a process they were not empowered to follow?  

I will be covering the January 20th meeting on a day when I hoped I would be able to celebrate the acheivement of President Elect Obama and the ability his campaign had to give a breath of fresh air to American grassroots democracy. But instead, I will be at Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with hundreds of Guildwood residents, hoping to see the community given the opportunity to share their questions, opinions and comments on placing an anemometer off the Bluffs. Toronto Hydro has said the meeting can and will only be just about placing an anemometer in the lake for two years worth of study at a cost of $1 million dollars, but the intent of Toronto Hydro is considerably more than just testing the wind. 

If you are a Guildwood resident, you can still register, and need to call Toronto Hydro using the information on the notice you should have received in the mail. If you have not received the notice, you can call Toronto Hydro directly at 416-204-0153 to register. If unable to register, I would encourage you to show up to speak to officials directly about being allowed to attend the meeting.