To the Expositor:
I have read stories in your paper about wind turbines and hospital cutbacks. I wonder if your readers are aware there is an interesting financial connection between these two stories?
In the name of reducing the deficit, the Ontario government has seen fit to slash and/or close many health services including eye surgery and eye degeneration treatment, orthopedic closures in some hospitals, some essential drugs no longer covered by health care, and reduction of hospital global budgets just to name a few. At the same time, the Ontario government is involved in an all-out effort to build and surreptitiously fund wind turbines. We are being told these turbines will supply us with cheap power. This so-called cheap power is a myth.
In most areas of the province we currently pay between 6.5 and 11.7 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, subject to the time of day. The government has agreed to an access of four times that amount for wind turbine generation—so much for cheap power. It is a shame that an area as beautiful as Manitoulin Island must be desecrated in the name of making money. Make no mistake Islanders will not receive cheap power from this folly.
I have researched the installation of water generation in this province only to discover there is no desire, assistance, or cooperation from the government to utilize available water power generation. This water power generated electricity can be brought on line at a fraction of the cost of wind power. The Ontario government has decreed that additional electrical power generation in Northern Ontario is now the exclusive domain of wind power.
This is not the first time our Governments have been sold a pig in a poke, and sadly it will not be the last.
Bill Lawrence Providence Bay
