Elevation Requests Have ALWAYS Been Denied

Apparently in the 10 years the current regluations have been in effect:

• The Ministry of the Environment has received 80 environmental screening reports for proposed electricty generation projects, and in response to these, there have been 50 elevation requests (so for over 60% of the proposed projects, people have not been satisfied the environmental screening report was adequate).
• All 50 elevation requests were denied.
• For all requests for a Minister’s review of the deny decision, the Minister never varied the Director’s decision, so no individual environmental assessments resulted, and no projects were stopped by the MoE.

To summarize, in the last 10 years there have been 50 electricity generation projects proposed where opponents requested an elevation (as this is the only way to start the process to stop a proposed project) and ALL of the 50 elevation requests were denied, both initially and after requesting a Minister’s review of the Director’s decison.

Some observations:

1. This would appear to be a completely flawed process in place to give false hope to the public and is in fact a waste of time for all parties involved.
2. An experienced proponent would know that they in fact do not need to respond to any of the public’s concerns with any level of detail, because the MoE ignores the public anyways.
3. Apparently the public in fact has no input to the environmental assessment process – the public comments accepted are just a façade to make it appear the public is involved.
4. The only real input is from other government Ministries, and many of these are conflicted. For example, the Ministry of Natural Resources mandate includes “Promoting, marketing and enhancing the protection of natural heritage in southern Ontario” and are also responsible for “Fish & Wildlife Management – sustainably managing Ontario’s fish and wildlife resources“, and yet they are approving the installation of a turbine that will kill fish.
5. The 100% denial record reminds one of the federal Public Sector Integrity Commissioner that received 170 complaints and never found any wrongdoing.

There is something wrong here.