Posts Tagged ‘NIMBY’
Toronto Star: Smitherman’s Words Come Home to Roost
I meant to post this piece from the Toronto Star earlier but I’ve been so busy with the campaign, Wind Concerns and work I just had not had time. It portrays a community sticking to its guns, and a desperate politician clearly regretting the impacts his abusive, dismissive tone will surely have. I said I believed George Smitherman would be chased out of Scarborough, and if the debate last night was any indication, this is in fact the case.
There are many months ahead, and for Guildwood residents the choice is clear. Our community needs someone who isn’t afraid to stand up to this bully and I am the only candidate that has demonstrated that not only am I able to, but I will stand up for our best interests even to George Smitherman.
Here is the link to the piece.
Toronto Star: Smitherman’s Words Come Home to Roost
No Comments »Have You Ever Noticed ‘NIMBY’ Is a Slur Used Never Used By Someone Actually From the Community Affected?
I know it’s New Years Eve and I should be wishing everyone a Happy New Year – keeping it light etc. etc. But I wanted to make a comment on something that really bothered me today first.
I loath those who accuse others of being ‘NIMBY’. It is a bizarre, infuriating argument that demonstrates nothing more than the general intolerance of the individual uttering the phrase. There was a piece done by the CBC that interviewed a woman named Colette McLean, a farmer in Harrow Ontario who has done more for her community than many people I know and probably more than all the anonymous eco-bullies that are attacking her in the comment section.
The folks who call other’s NIMBY which stands for Not-in-my-back-yard are rarely affected by the project they support for someone else’s community. They are hypocritical idealists whose actions demonstrate the saying ‘opinions are like assholes – everybody’s got one’ has some merit. They have an inflated opinion of the value of their unaffected, uninformed opinion,when compared with the informed opinion of someone who will be affected. Imagine the kind of arrogance it takes to assume that your uninformed view of how someone should think or live or what should happen to their community, of which you aren’t a part, should supersede a local resident’s own informed view.
Those who oppose something in their community often would oppose it anywhere else based on the proposal they’ve rejected. I know that is the case with Colette, it is certainly the case in Scarborough and within all Wind Concerns Ontario’s forty two groups in twenty seven counties. We want province wide protections for all communities.
In Scarborough we had the Toronto Environmental Alliance, an ineffective, City of Toronto funded ‘pat on the back’ squad for City Council (who provide their funding), organize buses of downtown folks to come out and attack local residents for raising questions about a totally unprecedented project – effectively trying to shut down an Environmental Assessment process for their political masters and funders. None of them lived in the area, none of their ‘backyards’ were affected. They knew so little about our community they didn’t even know how to take the TTC to the meeting location. Instead they rented school buses to shuttle people from the subway and literally mirrored the 116 Morningside bus route – harming the environment in the process by putting more diesel burning vehicles on the road.
Yet the ‘holier than thou hypocrites’ felt they somehow had the right to tell others that we couldn’t expect a fair process, a proper environmental assessment or demand international standards be met. These folks fought an environmental assessment, are funded by the same folks funding Toronto Hydro’s research and used bully tactics to try and stop local democracy. Simply put – they had no stake and felt others who did have a stake should only have a right to the opinion of those who aren’t affected.
We had them outnumbered though (3 to 1 – 900 to 300) even with all their well financed astroturfing our grassroots strength can take them any day of the week on this issue.
In Colette’s case – the people attacking her live in places like British Columbia, Manitoba, Ottawa, Etobicoke – not Harrow Ontario – not anywhere close. Perhaps the uninformed and unaffected who hide behind this insult should recognize how hypocritical it is for them to preach what SHOULD go in other’s backyards while theirs aren’t affected. They haven’t attended a single meeting, they haven’t read the proposal, they haven’t participated in the process – yet they somehow think they know what is best for Colette’s community and neighbours.
Those who seek to attack others and claim that all the local community care about is their own home, or that something is wrong with standing up for their community – should stick to their knitting and do more to shape the look, character and development of their own communities in the way they would like to see them shaped and butt out of decisions affecting others that have no impact on them. What’s more the actions folks take close to home often are calling for broad changes to how things are done across the entire jurisdiction.
I know Colette McLean as I know countless others around Ontario who are fighting these irresponsible projects and yes they care about their communities, but there isn’t anything wrong with that and anyone who thinks there is – needs to have their head checked. The changes they seek to how things are done would help protect all Ontarians and all Ontario communities from harm, not just their own. But it starts with local action and leadership.
The day people stop caring about their communities, and stop trying to shape the destiny of their part of the world is the day industry and government will have total control. To those so-called environmentalists who support rollbacks in environmental assessments and gutting local involvement in planning decisions – I say, you’re rolling back democracy and while it may start with turbines, it won’t stop there. It will continue to natural gas plants which back up wind turbines – as it has already in the Holland Marsh and Mississauga/Oakville area and will continue through the nuclear power plants you despise, dump sites, heavy industrial zoning, urban sprawl proposals, big box stores, intensification projects, demolition of heritage buildings, private for profit use of public commons among other things. All of this because you felt so strongly about what other communities should be doing that you supported silencing members of the affected community so your vision for how they should live could be fulfilled.
We all need to care about what happens in our communities, and backyards because that is where each of us can have the largest impact. Sure we can have a larger view and should. We should all be demanding proper environmental protection, and an understanding of human impacts on all projects – whether wind turbines or any other significant environmental change before any shovels hit the ground – but above all we as citizens shouldn’t join in with industry and government and turn on those who seek due diligence to protect their communities from harm – especially when we ourselves don’t live there and don’t understand the details or risks. We should never shout down people standing up for these things or their communities.
It is people like Colette McLean who is standing up not just for herself and her family, but her community and communities like hers around Ontario that should be respected and appreciated for their efforts and not attacked by cowards hiding behind anonymous comments on a news story.
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13 Comments »Is George Smitherman Familiar With the Environment?
While both Premier McGuinty and Minister Smitherman have softened their ‘absurd’ rhetoric since unleashing a very public backlash on themselves across the Province, Minister Smitherman still doesn’t seem to get it. They’ve backed down from flinging insults at Scarborough residents, but still don’t seem prepared to recognize the environmental concerns Scarborough’s residents have.
Smitherman’s latest comments represent the fundamental lack of understanding the Premier and he seem to have regarding Scarborough’s concerns. It’s not about our homes, it’s about preserving the environment from untold degradation. Perhaps if either of them or their staff cared to read or reply to a single letter Guildwood residents sent them before dismissing us as ‘NIMBY’ they would know this.
Smitherman again took aim at opponents of a proposed Toronto Hydro project to put a string of wind turbines in Lake Ontario two to four kilometres off the Scarborough Bluffs, saying they are far enough away from homes not to be “impactful.”
“People are raising questions,” he said in a nod to area residents concerned about the impact turbines could have on human health, migratory birds and other natural concerns.
“We have done a lot of work looking at the evidence … we’re always reviewing the literature,” Smitherman added, suggesting polluted air from coal-fired electricity plants poses health dangers that outweigh concerns about wind turbines. Toronto Star, February 20th 2009
It is important that the Minister is now prepared to recognize there is a human health impact worth considering, but why can’t he recognize there is an environmental impact too?
This isn’t a balancing act. The environment should never be a balancing act. I get for political reasons comparing wind to coal makes for a decent talking point, but it isn’t a coal power plant that currently has the potential to release harmful substances into Toronto’s drinking water, cause untold damage to the shoreline or to bird, bat and fish populations. It is a wind turbine project that will not require a single ‘iota’ of provincial environmental review whatsoever. Nothing. Once they have the anemometer application from Natural Resources as far as the Government is concerned it’s officially ‘go time’. (You could already suggest the Government has decided it is ‘go’ time, considering Toronto Hydro Energy Services has stalled their application and the Premier and his Deputy have already come out swinging in favour of the application they have yet to received.)
Can Smitherman seriously ignore the fact that the proposal calls for the installation of 18 000 tonnes of massive structures in the lake, stirring up all kinds of unstudied lake bed sediment upstream from where 45% of Toronto’s water is sucked out of the lake? All of this disturbed debris, like the sand that created the Beach and the Toronto Islands will naturally drift towards the waterworks, where it has the potential to get sucked into the City’s fresh water supply. There will be no environmental review first so we won’t even know what we’re sending down current. Although should it be a problem, the good people at Toronto Water will tell us about it when the release their annual report monitoring the dozens of contaminants in our water they monitor.
As for his coal reference, at least to me it appears the Minister is giving folks the choice between getting their toxic Mercury fix between the air we breathe and the water Toronto drinks. Lake Ontario’s fish are inedible due to high mercury levels, and like other heavy metals that don’t dissolve in water they concentrate in lake bed sediment on the bottom with other harmful materials like PCBs. Construction will undoubtedly displace massive amounts of lake bed sediment.
Smitherman appears ready to ignore the fact that the Scarborough Bluffs is the most sensitive portion of shoreline anywhere on Lake Ontario and this project if ‘forced’ (the Premier’s word) on the community would be the world’s closest project of it’s size. Most European countries say one needs a minimum distance from shore of 5KM for nature conservation reasons. Germany thinks 20KM is necessary. Greenpeace Europe agrees that offshore plants need to respect this minimum distance, European wind energy associations do too. They also acknowledge the importance of full environmental assessments. So why can’t Minister Smitherman and Joyce McLean (the past President of Canada’s Wind Energy Association) take the advice of Denmark, Germany, Greenpeace Europe (McLean is also the former Greenpeace Canada Chairperson, and a former Great Lakes Campaigner for Greenpeace), and the wind industry. Do they seriously believe that they know something that the industry, governments and environmental lobby in Europe don’t?
Joyce McLean has no credibility left on this after the series of misleading statements, dirty tricks, and a demonstrated inability to appreciate any of the environmental, viability or economic concerns residents have put forth. (Once again, I am fully prepared to back up this claim if challenged.) Does the Minister really want to cast his lot in with her and hope for a different outcome?
In it’s current form this bill is not a “green” anything. It’s a fraud of a bill. It is bill cloaked in a label, written by industry insiders with a vested financial interest, introduced by a guy whose chosen to attack folks who object to the fact that not a single Provincial environmental review of any sort is required to construct 60 objects as tall as the Royal York with each weighing the equivalent of 6 subway cars each and anchored up to 90 metres deep on an unstudied sand bar. It is madness that the Province believes no environmental study whatsoever is required.
If he is serious about passing a true Green Energy Act he would recognize that set backs are necessary for environmental protection as well. He would recognize that there is a legitimate need to do a thorough environmental assessment before approving any project that has the potential to release heavy metals and PCBs into Toronto’s drinking water or have any negative environmental impact. He needs to recognize that the Scarborough Bluffs are unstable by their nature, and the construction and heavy pounding that is required to anchor a wind turbine 90 metres into a sandbar could cause erosion and further destabilize the cliffs. He needs to recognize that provincial legislation exempts wind projects from any environmental review. The provincial government just doesn’t care what kind of impact these things have.
I’m not an expert. But based on the current legislation, this blog and my attempt to use other studies and data to educate my audience, is the closest thing to an environmental study that will come out of this proposed project if Minister Smitherman doesn’t find the guts to tell the wind industry that they too need to follow the rules and actually care about the environmental impact their projects have.
The Premier and the Minister need to wake up before they risk damaging the amazing shoreline that is the Scarborough Bluffs because they were either too stubborn to admit they are wrong or not strong enough to stand up and show the leadership needed to protect the cliffs from a moneyed interest that doesn’t appear to care. They need to ask themselves before Monday when they introduce the bill why they wouldn’t want to adopt well recognized international standards for shoreline nature conservation and why the Scarborough Bluffs, which are far more delicate than other shorelines in the world, needs to have literally the closest project of it’s size anywhere in the world? And if so, why does it need to be the closest project of it’s kind in the world and the only one without any environmental review?
Finally – if anyone in a position of responsibility wants to contact me in either the Premier’s office or the Minister’s Office to discuss internationally recognized shoreline set backs for all offshore wind projects, or internationally recognized full environmental reviews, I would be more than happy to share this and can be reached at john.laforet@laforet.ca anytime today or over the weekend.
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