Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty Has Been One Of Renewable Energy’s Worst Enemies

A Commentary by Doug Draper

If there is one group of people in Ontario most pleased to see the back of Premier Dalton McGuinty, I would bet what’s left of my money on people living in rural communities where his Liberal government has been hoping to locate wind farms.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty gutted all principles of home rule to site wind farms in rural communities.

Downwind of McGuinty’s surprise announcement this past October 15 that he is stepping down after nine years as Ontario’s Grand Poobah, I’ve heard on radio talk shows and read in newspapers and blog sites no end of ‘hallelujah’ responses from people living in the countryside in Niagara, Ontario and elsewhere in the province – people who are fighting proposals to locate towering wind turbines near their homes and farms.

And I have got to say, even as a longtime environment writer who believes that renewable sources of energy like wind and solar must be advanced as an integral part of any sustainable prosperity in our 21^st Century future, I can’t blame these people for feeling this way. As I have said over the past few years, in columns published here and in Niagara This Week, McGuinty’s decision, through his Green Energy Act, to sweep away any local say in where wind and solar facilities go is an assault on communities and on the principles of home rule. 

I have serious problems with many of reports wind-farm opponents keep repeating that wind turbines are a health hazard and that wind energy in general is a bad investment (as if governments are subsidizing more in it than the tens-of-billions they have sunk into nuclear, for example). But I have no problem understanding why people are angry at the McGuinty government for giving them less say in where a wind farm would go than they would have in where a landfill for municipal trash or even a hotdog stand in their community would go. 

In Ontario, we have gone from the years when the former Liberal government of David Peterson, going back more than two decades ago, not only allowed for full environmental assessment hearings for plans to build a toxic waste site for the province in the Niagara municipality of West Lincoln, but provided intervener funding to local residents to participate in those hearings. Now, with McGuinty and company, local residents and their municipalities have been told they just have to suck it up if a body comes in to their backyard with plans for a wind farm.

This draconian attack on the usual right citizens have to object to any plans that may have a negative impact on the local landscape makes it very hard for people like me to support renewable energy initiatives in Ontario. In fact, McGuinty and his government have been doing the cause of introducing wind and solar into our province’s energy mix more harm than good by trying to shove these instillations up a community’s nose, whether that community wants them or not. 

To make matters worse, we now all know from repeated reports in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and other media that the McGuinty government decided to abandon plans to build gas-fired energy plants within the urban boundaries of Oakville and Mississauga because the residents that lived there were adamantly opposed to them. And the decision to abandon those plans, at a cost to Ontario residents running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, was made prior to last year’s provincial election, when a couple of McGuinty’s Liberal MPPs in those communities were under the gun over them. 

So now we see that the McGuinty government abandoned plans for coal-fired plants being opposed by affluent urbanites in Liberal ridings and yet, it has removed the right of rural people and their communities to formally critique wind farm proposals in areas of Niagara like West Lincoln and Wainfleet where the MPP happens to be an NDP or Conservative.

This attack on the right for local municipalities to have a say in the Green Energy Act is reprehensible and must be overturned by any leader in Ontario, regardless of party, who replaces McGuinty.

Surely Ontario can move toward a renewable energy future that includes giving its citizens a fair say in where these energy facilities can and should be located to safeguard the health and welfare of all.

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