Dear Editor,
Bruce Mason asserts that TC Energy’s pumped storage project is now “defined” and that previous municipal opposition was therefore based on a “fiction”. This misrepresents both the regulatory process and TC Energy’s own filings.
An Initial Project Description (IPD) is not a finalized project design. Under the Impact Assessment Act, it is a preliminary document submitted precisely because critical elements remain unresolved and subject to review.
Indeed, TC Energy’s recently filed IPD explicitly states that key components are still under investigation. For example, the document acknowledges that TC Energy is considering two different transmission connection options — one to the Stayner Transformer Station and another to the Meaford Transformer Station — and that the routing of these lines will be subject to a future environmental assessment. The IPD further notes that electromagnetic field mitigation measures will be determined later in the design process, “if required”.
In other words, even now, the project’s transmission infrastructure, routing, and associated impacts are not defined.
Municipal councils were fully entitled — and correct — to express opposition to a megaproject whose location, design, cost exposure, and environmental impacts were uncertain at the time and remain so today. Opposing an undefined and evolving proposal is not confusion; it is caution.
Where conditional municipal support was offered, it is important to note what it was — and was not. Meaford Council’s “willing host” resolution was not an unconditional endorsement of the project. It was explicitly contingent on a full federal impact assessment under the Impact Assessment Act. That condition mattered. It preserved the requirement for independent federal scrutiny and ensured that an incomplete and evolving megaproject could not be advanced as a settled or nationally endorsed priority.
By attaching support to IAAC evaluation, council acknowledged that the proposal remained undefined and subject to review. This conditionality does not weaken the legitimacy of earlier municipal concern; it reinforces that councils understood the project was unresolved and acted responsibly to ensure federal oversight was not bypassed.
If TC Energy now wishes to claim that the project is fully known, it can do so by releasing a complete and final design, confirmed routing, and binding mitigation commitments. Until then, claims that municipalities opposed a “fiction” are themselves misleading.
What is really at issue is not whether a single proposal exists, but which future we choose. In a world that has evolved significantly since 2019, there are now credible, lower-risk alternatives for achieving the same grid reliability goals — alternatives the Independent Electricity System Operator itself has recommended. Seeking to avoid a post-PSP future when better options remain available is not confusion; it is responsible public judgment.
Sincerely,
Pat Zita, Meaford
