March 9, 2012
Ontario

Motion on wind turbine moratorium defeated

Written by Heather Boa, Bullet News, huron.bulletnewscanada.ca 9 March 2012

Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson is disappointed the Liberal government and the NDP ‘teamed up’ to defeat her private members motion calling for a moratorium on wind energy development until third-party social, physical and economic health, and environmental studies have been completed.

Thompson tabled the motion in December.

Earlier in the day, she hosted a press conference at Queen’s Park with Pat Jilesen, who is a Bruce County farmer and also a member of the Ontario Federation of Agricuture, Bethenee Jensen, who is a farmer and member of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, and Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod.

“I am very disappointed that the Liberals and NDP voted against this motion,” said Thompson, in a press release. “They are clearly not on the side of rural Ontario. Industrial wind farms were created by the McGuinty Liberals in haste, without proper planning and without proper science. Ontario right now has a surplus of power, and we are exporting excess power to other provinces and states for pennies on the kilowatt hour, while Ontario families are paying through the roof for Dalton McGuinty’s poorly planned out industrial wind energy projects. It’s simply not fair.”

The Liberal government has commissioned a $1.5 million study into the health effects of wind turbines at the University of Waterloo.

During debate in the Ontario Legislature yesterday, Chris Bentley, who is the minister of energy, said, “When I travel through rural Ontario, I see a heck of a lot of farmers and communities participating in the clean energy, green energy, clean air agenda that my friend opposite opposes.”

He said the Green Energy Act and the associated Feed-In Tariff program are currently under review.

“We’ve been listening very carefully to communities, to municipalities, to organizations both rural and urban, and we’re going to come out with a strengthened program very soon to make sure we continue to clean up the air, continue to grow jobs in our economy and continue to make sure that Ontarians, rural and urban, can participate in the green energy economy,” he said.

The motion was defeated in a vote of 28 in favour and 45 opposed.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/03/09/motion-on-wind-turbine-moratorium-defeated/