Conservative MPP Bill Murdoch laid out the facts about the ruling Liberals’ Green Energy Act last week, while soliciting support in the Ontario Legislature for his Private Member’s moratorium on wind farm development.
“When we passed Bill 150, you gave (Energy and Infrastructure Minister) George (Smitherman) all the power he needs, and overruled any municipalities which may have different ideas,” the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP said last Thursday. “(Municipalities) may want to look at some of these things, but this assembly, when it voted in favour of Bill 150, gave the power to the minister.”
This viewpoint is supported on the websites of a couple environmental legal firms in Toronto.
“Renewable energy projects are now exempt from a wide range of municipal and provincial approvals,” commented Dr. Dianne Saxe, on her envirolaw.com blog. The Williams and Shier firm, meanwhile, states the Act “exempts renewable energy generation projects from numerous sections of the Planning Act, including those dealing with official plans, zoning by-laws, demolition control areas, and development permit systems.”
Among those voting in favour of Murdoch’s resolution was Ernie Hardeman, MPP for Oxford, home to most and/or all of the turbines that would be erected in the proposed Stonetown Wind Farm project. (Original plans called for “between five and 15”  towers between Oxford Road 119 and Cobble Hills Road; more recently, negotiations with landowners have reportedly cooled among some Oxford County residents, but have simultaneously heated up to the west of Cobble Hills Road, in Middlesex County).
Murdoch argues neither the Health Ministry nor the province’s Medical Officer of Health have categorically stated there are no human health effects from industrial-scale wind farms.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘If we close down the coal-fired generating plants, we’ll make people better’,” he said in arguing his point in the Legislature. “Maybe that’s true, but do we make other people sick just because we’re going to close them down and put in all these wind farms? I’m not one to say that they’re going to make them sick, but I think that’s why we have a chief medical officer: to do that.”
Predictably, the Murdoch-proposed moratorium went nowhere. But that just serves to underline the realities of Ontario’s parliamentary system, where stepping away from the party line can lead to an unwanted career divergence. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a lack of support for Murdoch’s cause among governing-party MPPs from areas that are home to existing and/or proposed large-scale wind farms.
The defeat of Murdoch’s resolution won’t mean the end of the Opposition parties’ fight against the far-reaching powers granted by the Green Energy Act. But only a portion of that can be attributed to their actual opposition to what the legislation contained. Of greater importance, politically, is the fact the Iightning-rod-like Smitherman heads up the Energy portfolio. It’s Smitherman’s scalp they want, as much as anything requested by wind-blown constituents.
Environmental lawyer Saxe, in her blog, refers to the Toronto MPP as “Furious George,” adding he “has succeeded in pushing these regulations through in record time.”
Opposition parties, indeed, hope the bill was crafted and pushed through with such abandon that various wide cracks were left open — cracks through which critics can observe questionable inner workings; and through which bundles of cash can slip out into the ever-growing Liberal government waste stream.
Conservative strategists — hyping his former post as Health Minister during the beginnings of the now-notorious e-Health agency — have already keyed in on Smitherman as “the Minister of Scandals.” Now, the Green Energy Act exempts wind and solar proposals from true environmental assessments in favour of proponent-conducted reviews (a “shortened process which does not meet international standards for environmental assessment,” writes Saxe) — including by consulting companies which have direct financial stakes in the proposals.
And, just days after word of Ontario’s biggest-ever deficit, an even bigger threat to Smitherman’s powers: a leaked report that other ministers “gang-tackled” the Energy Minister at a Cabinet meeting over “billions of dollars” in subsidies promised to South Korea’s Samsung corporation in return for a huge Lake Erie-area wind farm and a Hamilton-area turbine factory. “Sources say rival ministers opposed to (the) Deputy Premier’s pet scheme ... have convinced (Premier) McGuinty to stall the landmark deal,” reported the Toronto Star on Oct. 31.
Municipal councils and wind farm opponents, meanwhile, are left pursuing less high-profile strategies. A class action moratorium, launched last month by a landowner from Prince Edward County, will work its way through the courts over the coming months. Proposal-by-proposal, opponents will try to use this to stall developments.
And in Bruce County’s Arran-Elderslie Township, planning department administrators informed councillors last week that a municipally-enacted moratorium wouldn’t hold water. Council was instead advised to seek having the entire township declared a “Heritage” zone — one of the few factors under the Green Energy Act that can be used on a municipal level to reject industrial-scale developments.