Guest Post: Open Letter to Ontario Liberal Party “Rural Roots” Campaign

Here is an open letter, sent November 30, 2012, to Mr. Luigi (Lou) Rinaldi of the Ontario Liberal Party. Mr. Rinaldi is a former MPP and listed in Ontario’s Active Registry as a lobbyist for the renewable energy firms Avocos Clean Energy Corp. and WPD Canada. He is chairing an Ontario Liberal Party initiative called Rural Roots. The Liberal Party reports that the Rural Roots campaign is “a strategy to re-engage rural Ontario.”

The author of the letter is George Browne, Co-Chair of LSARC.ca (Lake Superior Action Research Conservation). LSARC is grassroots organization dedicated to the protection of Lake Superior through citizen science and volunteerism.  If you are interested in preserving intact ecosystems and restoring biological integrity of the Lake Superior watershed using the scientific method to test hypotheses and research, then you are LSARC.  LSARC is proud to be a member of the John Muir Trust and the 60th member organization of Wind Concerns Ontario. (https://lsarc.wordpress.com/about/)

LSARC has been focused and most active on and with respect to industrial wind turbines and energy issues in Ontario. The organization is also concerned by and monitors issues with Mining and Forestry.

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Mr. Rinaldi,

For the past 9 years the McGuinty Liberal Government In Hiding has broken its promises to the people of Ontario, enabled a massive transfer of Public money to Private interests and undermined our Democracy and Environmental Protections.  Nowhere is this more evident than the manner in which it treated Rural Ontario through its GEEA & FIT program which created two classes of citizens, removed the right to local self-determination, enabled Corporations to effectively expropriate without compensation and sacrificed the health and mental well-being of hundreds of families for Corporate profits.
Crony Capitalism and mismanagement have been pervasive over the past 6 years.  Un-tendered $7 billion contracts, eHealth, ORNGE, Gas Plant cancellations and the biggest scam of all, the FIT program, have impoverished the Province, destroyed jobs, driven industry away and left ratepayers with spiralling energy costs and an out of control Provincial debt.
The McGuinty Liberal Government has based its decisions and policies on ideology and identity, not science, economics and due diligence.  In his 2011 Report the Ontario Auditor General said that the GEA lacked due diligence, specifically:
“¢ no independent, objective, expert investigation had been done to examine the potential effects of renewable-energy policies on prices, job creation, and greenhouse gas emissions; and
“¢ no thorough and professional cost/benefit analysis had been conducted to identify potentially cleaner, more economically productive, and cost-effective alternatives to renewable energy, such as energy imports and increased conservation.
What he said with respect to the Government and its GEA applies to all of the decisions, policies and programs enacted by your Party.  You are all imbued with a sense of your own exceptionalism and original virtue. But you are dangerously wrong and the people of Ontario, especially Rural Ontario, are paying for it.
True to form, when an Opposition Party ceased enabling and finally began to seriously question the McGuinty Liberal Government, the Liberal Government prorogued the Legislature – though it couldn’t even do that correctly, not having specified a recall date as required by law & custom – preferring again to deprive Ontarians of Democratic Government and rule by dictat from behind closed doors.
For years rural Ontarians have been trying to engage in a dialogue with your Government but have been ignored, rebuffed and victimized.
Now you want to hear our “thoughts and ideas for the future”.
How nice”¦
Your Government has always ignored what we say and done what it wanted to do in the first place and we see no reason to believe this time will be any different.
Years ago, fairy tales all began with “Once upon a time”¦”
Now we know they all begin with, “If I am elected.” – Carolyn Warner
George Browne
Lake Superior Action Research Conservation