Dear Editor;
Good for Owen Sound Council!
Clair Balfour’s April 18th letter asks why Owen Sound Council voted to support the Pumped Storage proposal when four other Councils opposed the proposal?
I can clarify that. I’ll warn you. It’s pretty ugly.
Councils who considered facts and performed due diligence have conditionally supported the proposal. Subject to key criteria being met. When the required information is available (Meaford, Owen Sound).
Councils who relied on faked data and who failed to ask the simplest, most basic, questions about “information” they received, “vehemently” opposed the proposal (Archipelago, Blue Mountains, Parry Sound, Georgian Bay).
It’s as simple as that. Swallow lies? Oppose.
Seek facts? DO YOUR JOB? Support.
It does raise a lot of questions. Just not the questions Clair Balfour thinks it raises.
I shared my last letter to you with an old friend. A Township of the Archipelago homeowner and a member of the Georgian Bay Association. We share concerns about Climate Change and hopes for green energy progress.
I asked. How could the Archipelago Council oppose the pumped storage proposal?
Working together we figured it out. The answer should sicken decent people.
Archipelago Council received a briefing from the Georgian Bay Association about imaginary “dangers” the pumped storage proposal poses in November. No attempt was made to hear from TC Energy, nor from anyone who understands the proposed project. Nothing was covered about the proposal’s benefits. Archipelago Council voted – the very next day – to ‘vehemently’ oppose the proposal. Shortly thereafter, in what appeared to be a coordinated campaign, Blue Mountains, Parry Sound, and Georgian Bay Councils voted to support the Township of the Archipelago’s memo – all opposing the proposal. No attempts to learn the truth or to learn about the proposal’s benefits were made by those Councils.
We confirmed with an Archipelago councillor what material they had before being asked to vote. It got posted on their Township website. There were approximately 1,100 pages in total. We read it all.
Almost every page that Archipelago Council received listed the dangers associated with a potential project location at the Base that was eliminated as a possibility almost five years ago. They received 2018 data – about the wrong place! Pollution problems they were being asked to prevent required Council to pretend TC Energy still planned to build somewhere TCE have no intention of building. It was a list of potential problems applying to someplace everyone knows is not the real proposed location. “Costs” to clean up potential water pollution came from an official government document. From the Walkerton Water Plant tragedy. Walkerton! Other “threats” related purely to a Pumped Storage Facility built in Michigan in 1973.
No mention of the design TC Energy proposes for Meaford was provided. Virtually nothing at all related to the current Meaford proposal. Except for one word.
“Meaford”.
We became exceptionally cranky. My friend confronted his Councillor. I wrote to Archipelago Council.
First, I referenced my Feb 29th letter to the Independent. I addressed the obvious falsehoods Meaford has endured for 4 years. I asked the Township of the Archipelago Council some very important questions:
“It appears that Council is opposing an important clean energy project for Ontario because Council does not understand where it is to be built. There are many concerns surrounding the project that go away completely if you only look at the correct proposed location. Meaford Council knows this. Obviously, this looks like a huge avoidable embarrassment for the Township of the Archipelago Council. I suggest you find out why. Reading one, or both, of my letters can help avoid that embarrassment.
“There are no facts that support your decision. The facts contradict everything you relied on to make that decision. You pretend the plan calls for building on a site that NO ONE has discussed building on for 4 years. Why mislead the public about the real location of the Project? Is it because all of your objections apply ONLY to the site the project WON’T be built on? If you’re honest about the location, all your concerns disappear?
“Do you really think it’s fair that Meaford Council did their job very well, but they are now taking flak, because you failed to even try to do yours?”
I sent a very similar letter to Blue Mountains Council.
My friend reports that Archipelago Council has been briefed by TC Energy and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation – finally. I hear Blue Mountains eventually heard from TC Energy as well. Finally!
That’s a very tragic sequence of events. “Vehemently” oppose something. Then, learn what it is?
(Please don’t misunderstand me. We don’t claim any of that education was because of us. But we like to think we helped gain their attention?)
We’re hoping that the Archipelago, Blue Mountains, Parry Sound, and Georgian Bay will do the right thing. By reversing their hasty and ill-advised opposition to the project. And correcting the public record. There’s hope. Owen Sound got it right. Meaford Council got it right. First. Meaford Council did the right thing first.
The questions I believe Clair Balfour should really be asking?
How did this happen?
Who supplied Townships with 2018 garbage “data” to base their decisions on? How many got that garbage? What did the Georgian Bay Association tell those Councils? Why? Who supplied the Georgian Bay Association with a list of imaginary threats? Was it sourced from Meaford? From who? Why didn’t those Councils seek the truth BEFORE they voted to oppose the Project? Will other Townships really make the same – completely avoidable – mistakes? How?
Who did this?
Those are far better questions. For all of us to ask.
P.S. Would love to hear how Clair Balfour knows it’s a “very bad financial deal for Ontario”. No one in the entire world knows the financial details yet. Oh well…
Bruce Mason, Meaford
