I’m a 66 year old Canadian who is partly responsible for allowing the McGuinty government to put in place the Green Energy Act and by so doing removing the protection afforded by the various pieces of legislation to children such as you whose parents have seen fit to place you in danger from the health impacts of wind turbines.
By setting what it deems to be acceptable setbacks and noise figures for those on property adjacent to wind turbine installations the Ontario government has acknowledged that anyone living closer than those setbacks or subject to noise levels higher than those referenced in legislation are at risk of health problems due to the wind turbine noise.
As a child living on land that is leased to a wind project YOU have no such protection from the government acknowledged long term effects of wind turbine noise because there are no setback or noise standards relevant to your residence.
Much has changed since our centennial year of 1967 when Ontario proudly heralded this province as “A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow”. Lately thousands of Ontarians have given of their time and expertise in an attempt to ensure that Ontario remains a place where everyone is protected equally from the potential health impacts of wind noise.
So far your government, the legal system, the organizations listed below and each corporation and individual involved in the implementation of wind energy in Ontariohave done nothing to provide any protection to you.
To Premier McGuinty and all who have sided with his government and the various self administering “professional” organizations to ignore the health impacts of wind turbine noise you are just ‘acceptable collateral damage’ from the spread of wind turbines across this province.
The list of those responsible for this sad state of affairs starts with your federal government down through the office of the speaker and all parties of the government of Ontario, the various ministries and allied mandating institutions.
Every single assembly and professional organization that you thought might have a requirement in law to ensure that you are protected has failed you and all in the name of bigger government, bigger business and a greater transfer of Canada’s wealth to the already-rich, mostly resident outside of Canada.
- The Offices of Canada at the United Nations who purport, with grandstanding, to support the UN rights of Canadian children at the United Nations and yet have ignored my requests for help in protecting Ontario children living on the lands leased for wind generation left with NO protection under the Green Energy Act and who are discriminated against in relation to the protection afforded to their neighbors on adjoining properties.
- The office of the speaker for the Ontario legislature who has failed to require the TRUTH in the form of science supported by the scientific method from members of the legislature in all matters related to the Green Energy Act in the house and by so doing has destroyed the integrity and decorum expected from that institution.
- The Ontario Legislature for failing to require as part of the GEA a “standardized” contract for wind leases that was clear, did not include any form of “GAG” component and made the wind generation proponent fully responsible for ALL aspects of damage to health and for the complete remediation to the original for the removal of every component of the wind generation equipment, power line and road systems enforced by means of a bond for an amount determined by an actuary to be sufficient for every potential future claim.For accepting without question the discriminatory report of the Chief Medical Officer of Health (Dr. King) in consultation with the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Council of Ontario Medical Officers of Health when they failed to investigate or make any recommendations related to those living on leased properties that have no protection in the law for noise levels that the GEA acknowledges are health impacting.
- The MPP’s who blindly voted in favor of the Green Energy Act (Notably absent for the vote was Premier Dalton McGuinty) and by so doing removed all protection from mothers and children residing on land that has been leased to wind developers.
Aggelonitis, Sophia | Albanese, Laura | Arthurs, Wayne | Balkissoon, Bas | Bartolucci, Rick | Bentley, Christopher | Broten, Laurel C. | Brown, Michael A. | Brownell, Jim | Bryant, Michael | Cansfield, Donna H. | Caplan, David | Carroll, Aileen | Chan, Michael | Colle, Mike | Delaney, Bob | Dickson, Joe | Dombrowsky, Leona | Duguid, Brad | Duncan, Dwight | Flynn, Kevin Daniel | Fonseca, Peter | Gerretsen, John | Gélinas, France | Gravelle, Michael | Horwath, Andrea | Hoy, Pat | Jaczek, Helena | Jeffrey, Linda | Johnson, Rick | Kular, Kuldip | Lalonde, Jean-Marc | Leal, Jeff | Levac, Dave | Marchese, Rosario | McMeekin, Ted | McNeely, Phil | Meilleur, Madeleine | Miller, Paul | Milloy, John | Mitchell, Carol | Moridi, Reza | Pendergast, Leeanna | Phillips, Gerry | Ramal, Khalil | Ramsay, David | Rinaldi, Lou | Ruprecht, Tony | Sandals, Liz | Smith, Monique | Smitherman, George | Sousa, Charles | Tabuns, Peter | Takhar, Harinder S. | Van Bommel, Maria | Watson, Jim | Wilkinson, John | Wynne, Kathleen O. | Zimmer, David
- The Ministry of the Environment for purporting to have science supporting every facet of the regulations yet fighting every attempt to obtain such supporting science through the freedom of information legislation even going so far as to start charging for the preparation of fee estimates as a way to raise the costs of obtaining information beyond the resources of average Canadians. For refusing to accept the original submission on the GEA sent by registered mail regarding the GEA from the residents of Clearview.For allowing projects to proceed knowing that they had no protocols or test procedures that their own staff could use to validate the noise levels upon which projects were “rubber stamp approved” by the “professional” engineers at the MOE.For issuing contracts to engineering companies with a conflict of duty who are “paid-up” members of CANWEA to define and determine the noise measurement protocols and processes that will be the final determinate of whether projects meet new standards set long after their original approval under the “standards” set down in the GEA.The list goes on and on, and regardless of who is the Minister “responsible” (what a misnomer!) there is absolutely no change by the bureaucracy or its professional Engineers to undertake any honest scientific evaluation of the noise generated by wind turbines having any form of much needed public oversight.
- The Ontario Ministry of Health for its failure to perform the most basic due diligence and research towards ascertaining the health impacts from wind turbines, choosing instead to rely on information from selected scientific publications. The report issued by the MOH related to the health impacts of wind turbines on Ontarians was generated simply from a “read” of peer reviewed papers performed by a junior member of staff and failed to even include interviews of “protected” Ontarians (those living on adjacent properties) let alone anyone such as you living on “unprotected” lands and subject to much higher allowable levels of turbine noise.
- The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Council of Ontario Medical Officers of Health for the support of discrimination and allowing medical officers of health (acting or permanent) under their control or within their organization to accept taxable income from the wind industry to promote the position that there are no health impacts from wind turbines when the legislation itself acknowledges by default that any person living closer than 550 meters or being subjected to noise levels greater than provided for under the GEA is liable for long term health impacting conditions. This lack of action discriminates against every person forced to live without protection of law on lands leased for wind generation.
- The “Chair” in renewable energy at the university of Waterloo who has spent (wasted) the last year assembling a cadre of experts in wind related sciences and has yet to produce one single piece of information supporting the $5million of taxpayers money that the government endowed to this process.
- The HPARB for refusing to properly investigate the complaints rejected by the College of Physicians and Surgeons thereby giving its tacit permission for physicians to accept taxable income for representing the position of the wind industry and for them to continue making statements in areas’ in which they have no expertise, without fear of repercussions. For issuing final decisions on such complaints 2 months prior to receiving the evidence of complainants thereby reducing the whole process to a humorous exercise in futility by very highly paid civil servants none of whom can be held responsible for their actions.
- The office of the Ontario Ombudsman was made aware of your plight three years ago and has failed to issue any report or publication related to the matter of wind turbine noise or health impacts choosing instead to side with the HPARB in allowing medical officers of health to continue receiving taxable income from wind power lobbying organizations and refusing to investigate a situation where the final decision of the HPARB was made two months BEFORE it even received the submissions of the complainant!
- The office of the Ontario Privacy Commissioner whose adjudicator, by refusing to deal with the MOE charging arbitrarily assessed fees to SOME Ontarians to prepare fee estimates, have given their tacit permission for the Ontario government to continue making charges not mandated in legislation for the preparation of fee estimates, thereby escalating the costs of obtaining access to noise-related health information held by the MOE to the point where average Ontarians cannot afford to obtain the noise readings affecting their health.
- The engineers at the MOE whose rubber stamping of the data files produced by other professional engineers working for wind proponents without requiring that data to be current, measurable or reflecting the error corrections and incorporation of current publicly available test results from working installations required under section 77 of the Professional Engineers Act. IF the MOE conducted field tests and applied the necessary corrections found by international authorities to the computer estimates upon which each project is approved, most wind projects would be shown to be outside of the acceptable levels for approval of those projects.
- The College of Physicians and Surgeons for its lack of concern and rejection of complaints over the actions of its members in positions of public trust who are receiving taxable income (as defined by the CRA) from wind industry organizations to disseminate and support the views of the wind industry without being required to produce proof of their qualifications in noise measurement nor provide one verifiable piece of science to support their assertions that the noise from wind turbines will not impact the health of our children over the long term.
- The Professional Engineers Association of Ontario for turning a blind eye to the way in which their members are failing to meet the requirements of section 77 of the Ontario PEng act and refusing to properly investigate complaints from even their own members about the actions of other members in regard to the flawed estimates and measurement of wind turbine noise.
- The members of the Professional Engineers Association working for wind proponents to produce noise “estimates” who flaunt the requirements of their registration by referencing terms such as “It is our belief” and “It is our understanding” to be the science that their association and the MOE (purportedly) requires to support their work and which their “associates” at the MOE accept to be valid data for the purposes of project approval.
- Each Ontario professional engineer who sits on the sidelines while a few of their peers, identified above, place the credibility of their whole profession in question through their failure to use the scientific method and the precautionary principle as the basis for their calculations of noise levels generated by wind turbines.
- The lawyers whose crafting of the contracts for leasing land to wind development companies includes “GAG” clauses that prevent your parents from even speaking out about or reporting to your doctor or local heath unit any impacts on your health from wind turbine noise, blade flicker or noise.
- Every “LLC” (Limited Liability Corporation) involved in any aspect of the wind industry that can (and almost certainly will) legally walk away from any responsibility for health damages, remediation of abandoned sites and any other form of accountability with the full blessings of the governments that have allowed this form of irresponsible corporate framework to exist.
- Every Ontarian who supports discrimination by failing to insist that all levels of government provide the same protection to those without a voice of their own living on land leased for wind projects as those living on properties adjacent to wind projects.
Because of the various forms of protection that governments put in place to look after their own and since there is no accountability for civil servants, almost no one in the above list can be held personally responsible for their actions, you have very few options available to you to require your governments to protect you as they already do for your neighbors on adjoining properties.
Most of us in the wind movement placed our hopes with the Ontario Ombudsman but since the “renewal” of his five year term by Premier McGuinty and the Ontario Legislature it would appear that wind issues have “blown away” and the lack of protection provided to you has fallen out of his focus so even the “bastion of last resort” has joined the rest of your government in ignoring your plight.
As we allow governments to expand and take over control of everything we hold dear, we are certainly leaving one hell of a legacy to our children and grandchildren.
The documentation that I have collected over the past three years supporting every statement that I have made above will be made available to you (upon request) on CD so that when you are old enough to be able to act for yourself you will have evidence of the manner with which your government treated you when you were a child.
Sadly,
Peter Lomath, father of 4 and now retired after 45 years working in sound measurement and audio communications.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/12/06/an-apology-to-children-living-on-properties-leased-for-wind-generation/
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