For Immediate Release:
April 29, 2011
Queens Park – Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett rose in the Ontario Legislature today to read in petitions calling for, “a moratorium on wind development”, as well as a revision of the Green Energy Act.
“I’ve got close to 1,000 names on a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario,” Barrett began before reading the petition preamble. “Whereas industrial wind turbine developments have raised concerns among citizens over health, safety and property values; Whereas the Green Energy Act allows wind turbine developments to bypass meaningful public input and municipal approvals;
“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legis¬lative Assembly of Ontario as follows: Revise the Green Energy Act to allow full public input and muni¬cipal approvals on all industrial wind farm developments and that a moratorium on wind development be declared until an independent, epidemiological study is completed into the health and environmental impacts of industrial wind turbines…I agree with this petition and affix my signature.”
Barrett later pointed out that while government continues to turn a deaf ear to a mounting municipal and local resident concern over wind turbines, he and Leader Tim Hudak are proposing action.
“McGuinty’s Green Energy Act amounts to a municipal gag order on local energy decision making and another attack on rural Ontario,” Barrett argued. “Local communities and their people have little opportunity to comment on projects that will impact them – that’s not right.”
Barrett and Hudak have repeatedly committed to restoring municipal powers of decision-making stripped away by the Green Energy Act.
At last count 75 municipalities – including Norfolk and Haldimand – have passed resolutions objecting to industrial wind turbines and/or Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act.
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For more information, please contact MPP Toby Barrett at: (416) 325-8404,
(519) 428-0446 or 1-800-903-8629