Several municipal politicians walked out when Premier Dalton McGuinty spoke at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conferences here on Monday.
Some media reports have estimated upwards of 80 people took part in the planned walkout, but it was certainly not a mass exodus from the room.
Wellington County Warden Chris White said in an interview the next day the action drew little attention.
“If you didn’t know it was happening you wouldn’t have noticed it,” he said, adding, “It wasn’t a disruption.”
Nevertheless, some Newspaper reports indicated McGuinty is considering handing back some powers to municipalities when it comes to approval of wind turbines – but White does not necessarily believe that.
He met with McGuinty and two staff members when he represented the Western Warden’s Association to discuss a number of topics, and turbine approvals was one of the major topics they covered.
White said McGuinty promised to review the Feed in Tariff program and the approval process. He said a deputy minister is now considering those factors.
Still, White said, “I don’t think they’re looking at handing powers back.”
In that case, he said, provincial officials “need to be in the room” when turbine proponents make their proposals to local governments, and they should hear what the program’s opponents have to say before they give approvals.
McGuinty might be modifying his stance slightly after Liberals were nearly wiped out in rural Ontario, losing four cabinet ministers in the last election, including Minister of the Environment John Wilkinson in the Perth-Wellington riding.
White added Conservative leader Tim Hudak “indicated he would stop all these turbine subsidies – which would kill the program.”
He said without subsidies from the provincial government for solar and wind power, neither of those programs is financially feasible.
Taxpayers are paying the cost for them now.
White said it is more likely McGuinty’s government “may tinker with the process” now used to approve wind turbine projects.
One approval for Mapleton Township, near Arthur, is currently in the courts and also under appeal at the Environmental Review Tribunal.
White said it appears to be useless to simply state municipalities have some powers – if they cannot stop them at the local level.
“If, at the end of the day, they can’t say no – why bother?” he said.
White said provincial officials are “still trying to digest” the problems with turbines in the countryside, and he suggested that issue and several others could be part of the provincial budget expected sometime this month.
