By agreeing with our position, the government recognized all these ‘wind welfare’ special interests and industry representatives the government either funds or that receive money from special interests tied to the wind industry, just aren’t credible and can’t be relied on for reasonable, responsible advice. Simply put, the Government of Ontario acknowledged by backing down that all of those who irresponsibly convinced them they didn’t need to do science in the first place were wrong and not credible for setting policy going forward.

Is it any wonder then that groups like Environmental Defence found out about the announcement from a reporter – not the government? Frankly, if I were the Minister of Energy and had been receiving such bad, self interested, incomplete advice from an orgy of special interests who came together to become the “Green Energy Act Alliance” I wouldn’t want to talk to them either as I cleaned up their mess.

The fight on land continues and will be won there as well, because these same special interests who were anti science, anti democracy and pro corporate welfare offshore hold the same views on land and offered even worse bad advice there. We will continue to fight for those who are being harmed on land, to restore local democracy and end the bizarre notions put out by pro industrial wind special interests.

Wind energy isn’t green, it isn’t reliable and it shouldn’t be considered a genuine form of power production because it can’t stand on its own and virtually every form of power production in the grid today besides wind and large scale solar can and don’t need subsidies to do it.

Electric generation from wind dates back to 1887 and scientists have been saying since 1865, that wind is an admirable form of energy production and favourable to coal, but the matter of storage (reliability) needs to be sorted out if it is to be a viable alternative. This is a problem that has been worked on and studied for the last one hundred and forty years with no meaningful improvement. Instead, the game plan is to pay for the power even when we don’t need it at multiples of what it’s worth, to back up 100% of wind energy’s capacity with fossil fuels to make up for the dips and surges and build them dangerously close to people because it’s convenient. The jobs arguments are just lies. The economic impact of wind energy is absolutely negative because of the harm it does to real, private sector, unsubsidized honest work.

In short, instead of becoming a viable form of energy production, industrial wind is an expensive PR statement government’s make, that has nothing to do with generating clean energy – because wind turbines can’t on their own without fossil fuels burning in the background. The negative effects on people, the environment and economy are unconscionable and cannot be allowed to stand.

Those who push industrial wind can’t honestly claim they care about the environment. They support fossil fuel expansion, oppose environmental assessments, local democracy and refuse independent science on the impacts and benefits of the technology. They are mere puppets for someone’s profit – incidentally those who often fund their misinformation campaigns.

This has become a losing battle for the industrial wind industry and its special interest groups. It’s a battle we need to continue to fight, if our province is to have a bright future and citizens, not special interests and corporate welfare seekers are to control the destiny of our province.

It is a sad day on Ontario when a resident has to sue the government to have their health protected. But the successful lobbying of the wind industry has made that the reality in Ontario today.

In a meeting between the Canadian Wind Energy Association and Wind Concerns Ontario, Robert Hornung, the President of CanWEA ignored pleas from our medical experts to call for an independent third party epidemiological study into the effects of poorly sited turbines on human health. In response to his repeated and totally lame answer ‘well we’re not seeing this in other jurisdictions (other jurisdictions have real regulations and recognize the precautionary principle in planning and also didn’t seek to dismantle democracy or environmental planning)’ my response was simple ‘your problem is in Ontario’. We each repeated ourselves two or three times on this point.

I told Hornung in that meeting that they can win all the back room victories they want through lobbying because that isn’t where the ballot boxes are kept and that once we lost our procedural rights, our own options would be legal and political. When the new regulations were announced last month, it was clear we had lost our procedural rights in the interest of the wind industry’s right to our money – which we’ll all be paying when our electricity bills go up 12% by 2011 (this doesn’t include power increases or the HST, this is just the fantasy ‘smart’ grid needed to allow these stupid projects to sell power into the grid, the occasional time they produce it). I applaud the personal strength of Ian Hanna who has been brave enough to take on the government and stand up for the health of Ontarians. I am certain tens of thousands of residents across Ontario will be lining up in support of him. I know I am.

Many of us are also lining up in support of a motion to be introduced in the legislature on October 29th 2009 calling on the government to put in place a moratorium on all new industrial wind projects until proper health studies have been done. The proposal has been endorsed by the medical officer of health for Bruce Grey and is receiving support from around Ontario.

This joins a growing worldwide push in recent weeks by medical professionals to study the health impacts and end the industry backed plan of ignoring the legitimate suffering of individuals. There are over 100 people in Ontario suffering ill effects. It is no coincidence that Canadian Hydro Developers got into the real estate business in a big way, to the tune of nearly two million dollars over three years near one of their projects. It wasn’t because they liked the view – its because they were making people sick and decided two million bucks was a better voluntary solution to whatever the courts would throw at them.

I am hopeful on October 29th the legislature will pass a resolution recognizing the need to stop what we’re doing until we’ve studied the effects. I believe this position is in line with statements made by both the NDP and PC parties and hope at the very least, each of them will be voting to protect human health in rural Ontario from these carpet bagging developers that are tearing communities apart and using the law they’ve written and paid for through massive donations to the Ontario Liberal Party as justification.