George Smitherman Accuses Guildwood Residents of "Gamesmanship" – Paul Ainslie 'Amused' By Attacks

by John Laforet
posted on March 14th, 2009 at 13:56:07 pm

“Smitherman admitted strong opposition continues in Scarborough’s Guildwood area to Toronto Hydro testing for a possible wind farm offshore, but he complained residents practised “gamesmanship” against
a utility, which tried to present the process “in an honest and forthright way.”

There are always questions for which there are no answers, and repeating them enough creates “an impression of stonewalling,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of support for that wind farm. But you don’t really hear about that.”

…

“In an interview, Paul Ainslie, whose Scarborough East Ward 43 includes Guildwood, said he’s “amused” by the Liberal government’s attitude.

Guildwood homeowners, he said, are held up as Not In My Back Yard opponents of clean energy to justify its legislation, but Toronto Hydro, which was “grudging” in how in gave out information, doesn’t need municipal permission for a wind farm.”

Minister defends green energy plans in meeting – Scarborough Mirror, March 13 2009

Once again Minister Smitherman has decided to run his mouth about Scarborough residents without first getting virtually any of the facts available to him. I have not been able to find a single resident who wrote Mr. Smitherman in January who has yet to receieve a response – which suggests his staff aren’t even bothering to read our concerns as he legislates our rights away.

The only gamesmanship has been perpetuated by Joyce McLean and her associates on the fringe left. Does Smitherman actually believe it is ‘honest and forthright’ to purposely select a meeting location outside of the community in question, against the advice of local representatives because they believed the location was too small, and then have to cancel the meeting when too many people arrived? Does Minister Smitherman believe it was ‘honest and forthright’ when groups funded by the same sources as the project McLean is managing, stacked Guildwood’s community meeting with busloads of paid environmentalists to shout down opposition in our community? Does he believe it was ‘honest and forthright’ when McLean and Toronto Hydro Energy Services came up with an exclusionary registration process that denied hundreds of resident’s an opportunity to participate? Was it ‘honest and forthright’ when McLean opted not to speak about the class environmental assessment required for the anemomter at all at the meetings called as part of the process and instead disclosed seven days after the meeting that that was it’s purpose? Is it honest and forthright for McLean to mislead resident’s about the success (or utter failure) of her last wind experiment? Is refusing to provide the community with information on minimum wind thresholds ‘honest and forthright’?  How about leasing the lake bed in July 2005 and waiting three years to tell the community about it, and then only doing so as part of a manditory comment period that MNR requires.How about denying me information that is considered public and will need to be made available at some point, until after the project has been approved.

The fact is Toronto Hydro Energy Services has made community participation absolutely impossible and angered so many residents there is no way this project can expect to recieve any community support whatsoever. If Smitherman wants to test this theory, I will gladly invite him door knocking with me to test the community pulse (and the waters for his Mayoral bid).

As far as gamesmenship goes, McLean has practiced more gamesmenship than anyone else in the process and she has single handedly destroyed any credibility Toronto Hydro Energy Services had in the eyes of residents. It’s too bad THES doesn’t care about their image, because a normal place would have pulled her off this project months ago and apologized for her utter disregard and lack of common sense.

If the Minister wants to see gamesmenship, he should keep ignoring and trashing Guildwood residents legitimate concern about his utter disregard for the environment and local democracy and wait to see our reaction the next time someone hands us a ballot. It won’t be pretty, I promise. Consider that of 6500 voters in Guildwood, 700 attended the last attempt at a meeting by Toronto Hydro and even using a randomized system for determining who spoke, not a single person rose in favour of the anemometer study.

Why? Because unlike Minister Smitherman, Ms. McLean, or Toronto Hydro Energy Services – Guildwood residents care about the environment and we know that nowhere in the world could anyone put a project this close to a shoreline. We know that Europe is waking up to the need to protect shorelines and has created nature conservation buffers mostly of 10k or more. We know that Environmental Assessments are important, even if Minister Smitherman doesn’t think so and we will oppose any project that doesn’t actually require one (regardless of what Ms. McLean will try and claim).

Richard Nixon, like George Smitherman cited a ‘silent majority’ when faced with an absolute crumbling of support for a drawn out battle of his. For Nixon it was Viet Nam, for Smitherman it’s Bill 150 – if passed as it is, it is certain to be the McGuinty Government’s political equivelent of a drawn out, unpopular war.

As for Paul Ainslie finding it ‘amusing’ that Minister Smitherman is attacking Guildwood residents and calling them NIMBY and our concerns ‘absurd’, I would say that he might be amused, but those of us who are actually talking about real issues aren’t. Councillor Ainslie would be well advised to take a break from his failed zoo take over and take a look at some of the more incoherent points he has made regarding the project that not only do not reflect the community position, but feed directly into the Minister’s communications assualt strategy on Guildwood. – Ainslie’s website has a number of them. Contrary to his comments about municipal involvement, the Councillor sits on the Toronto Atmospheric Fund and the City of Toronto Council – both of which are municipal bodies, each of which voted to fund this project, before it was made public to Guildwood residents. He is also well aware the City of Toronto owns Toronto Hydro and therefore it is inexcapably a municipal issue and one that he should have known about considerably longer than it’s been public to Guildwood residents.

As I said the day Premier McGuinty first attacked Scarborough residents ‘resident’s will not lay down’. He and Minister Smitherman can say whatever they’d like, the fact is steamrolling this bill through will have political concequences they don’t seem all that interested in and that’s fine, I guess. Further, Bill 150 will not make up for all the job losses that are piling up. February alone saw Ontario shed 35 000 jobs. This $700 million project Toronto Hydro proposes, according to McLean will produce just 200 ‘short term’ construction jobs. Ontario will probably lose more jobs between Bill 150′s introduction and royal assent than even this magic 50 000 jobs it is supposed to create somehow over three years. Don’t believe me? – Check back in May.