To the Expositor:
As a director of Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) I would like to express my sympathies to Rick Martin for being picked on by us and our reputed “fear mongering”!
According to his recent contribution (advertisement) (‘Manitoulin Wind News,’ page 5A) on behalf of McLean’s Mountain Wind Farm Northland Power Inc., Wind Concerns has changed its name and “our bias is clear.” What Mr. Martin brags about in his early comments is that he contacted Mark Wales of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) to put his company’s position forward and infers that he has inexplicably converted him. This rhetoric is atypical of the pro-wind side and while we appreciate Mr. Martin’s views, he fails to disclose that he didn’t bother to even try to contact anyone from Wind Concerns Ontario to explore our differences and instead makes incorrect assumptions. The fact that we have a new website (www.windconcerns.ca) has not changed the focus or makeup of WCO or its members. Mr. Martin could easily have contacted any of us to relate his confusion about this matter, but did not do so, nor did he bother to query us on what our objections to industrial wind turbines are all about.
It is admirable that Mr. Martin claims to “play the straight-and-narrow rules of engagement,” but then goes on to claim that “all the studies and reports commissioned by third-party experts” were reviewed by “governments’ experts too.” There have been a myriad of other contra “expert” reports that have been ignored by those same “governments’ experts” and disclosure by the Ministry of the Environment that they were unable to even measure noise standards.
Mr. Martin’s employer decided to issue the “public notice” in respect to the OEB hearing mere days (December 19, 2011) before the Christmas season and posted it between Christmas and New Year’s and one can only surmise that the hope was to perhaps take advantage of the short (10 day) intervener notice period that the OEB sets. Is that playing by the “straight-and-narrow rules of engagement” that he purports to do?
Mr. Martin, in the advertisement, hauls out the same old red chestnuts about “anti-smog, anti-asthma, anti-coal” that CanWEA (Canadian Wind Energy Association)and the Ministry of Energy have used continually to justify the damaging and expensive attempt at greening Ontario, which has ruined peoples lives for health reasons, destroyed their property values, killed birds and bats and brought the term “energy poverty” to the reality it is today.
Had Mr. Martin bothered to look beyond his position with the industrial wind developer he would soon discover that “the only side we should take is the future’s” will destroy the future for our children and our children’s children.
Yours truly,
Parker Gallant, director
Wind Concerns Ontario
