Wind Moritorium speech

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

Wednesday 28 April 2010 OPPOSITION DAY WIND TURBINES Mr. John Yakabuski: I want to thank and recognize members on all sides of the House for allowing us the extra time and not using all of the time for petitions today.

I move that the Legislative Assembly of Ontario calls for a moratorium on all wind farm projects until an independent, comprehensive study of the health and environmental impacts of wind farms is completed and Premier McGuinty restores the planning authority governing them to municipalities and local boards.
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Mr. Peter Tabuns: Before I go on to the main body of my speech, I just want to say to the Sergeant-at-Arms and the security staff here that although I have at times been on the other side of the fence, I must say that they handled things well today, and they deserve credit and acclaim from the people in this chamber. They showed respect and they showed restraint.

I also have to say to those who are protesting in the galleries today, for people who engage in civil disobedience, they also showed restraint. They were non-violent, and for that-people standing up for their beliefs-I have to have respect.

Having said all of that, today we're considering a resolution from Mr. Yakabuski that calls for a moratorium on all wind farm projects until independent, comprehensive study of the health and environmental impact of wind farms is completed, and further, that the Premier restore the planning authority governing wind farms to municipalities and local boards.

I'll go further in, but I want to say, just on the face of this resolution, if you're going to restore planning authority, it should be restored with regard to nuclear power plants and gas-fired power plants. That is far more substantial and significant, in my mind, than wind turbines, and I will address that in the course of my 35 minutes.

Secondly, there are many health studies that have been done in Europe, in the United Kingdom and here in Canada that, in terms of the responsibilities we have as legislators, I think, give us sufficient confidence to proceed with investment in renewable energy.

The reality of this resolution being put forward by this member is to stop the installation of wind turbines in this province. I know the member will talk about the fact that it restores the planning power of municipalities. When we debated the Green Energy Act, I opposed the withdrawal of power from the municipalities because I felt that the goals the government wanted to reach could be reached without taking that step. But today the reality is that this resolution is directed against green power, using municipal authority as a tool, not as the principle that's being put forward.
It is being argued that we should not build wind turbines because we haven't done full health studies and, thus, there may be a risk to people. I see this resolution as being very similar to the sorts of delay tactics I have seen over the last two decades to stop action on climate change: It might be a threat to our economy if we take action on climate change; we don't know all the science yet, so let's back off on taking action. I think that the motion, fundamentally, is flawed right there. If, in fact, there is a deep concern about health, noise, emissions, why is there not a resolution calling for the end of road building in Ontario? I can tell you right now, without a doubt, that the more roads and expressways that are built, the more cars that are on the roads, the greater the health problems that we face. Why not a call to end any airport construction or expansion? Because the reality when you look around the world is that air travel causes significant impacts on the health and well-being of the people who live under those flight paths.
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I think the reality is that we are not in the end talking about health; we are talking about a motion to push off, to do away with, one of the more significant tools, one of the more significant instruments that can be used to reduce pollution-causing electricity generation in this society.
Let's talk for a minute about the health issues, because the very foundation of this argument is that, in fact, there is a profound health problem-a health problem that no one understands, that has to be addressed, has to be taken on-as if there is no one who has looked at this issue, thought it through, and presented conclusions.

Ontario's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King, last October said, "There is no scientific evidence, to date, to demonstrate a causal association between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects." I have to say, the chief medical officer of health for the province deserves some respect. She is a credible source of opinion on these matters.

Dr. Isra Levy, Ottawa's medical officer of health-his quote: "The Ontario government has fulfilled the request by Ottawa city council to conduct a comprehensive review of the available peer-reviewed medical literature regarding wind-turbine-related health issues. The review did not find evidence of health effects that would warrant public health interventions...." Or Quebec public health.
If you look at people who work in the field of epidemiology and public health, you will find that they, on the whole, either see negligible impact or no impact. And where they see negligible impact, that will be related to night-time noise, and that is an issue and that does have to be addressed. I will get back to that as we go through.

If we look at the European experience, Denmark has been a leader in wind power since the 1970s. They have an industry in that country, a country with a population of the GTA, that creates thousands of jobs and adds significantly to the country's export earnings. Denmark is 10,000 square kilometres-that's smaller than Nova Scotia-and it's got as many people as the GTA. We do not have, from Denmark, a wave of illness related to wind turbines. That is not part of the literature. That is not part of the experience of that country.

Germany, where wind turbines are the second-largest consumer of German steel: Germany is three times smaller than Ontario, with eight times the population-three times smaller, eight times the population, and lots of wind turbines.

I have to say, I've had opportunities over the last decade and a half to work at some length with environmentalists in Europe, to talk with them, those who, since the early 1980s, have lived in a situation where more and more wind turbines have been deployed in some areas of Denmark at a level far denser than anything we see here in Ontario. I've talked to people whose primary focus in their environmental activities is looking out for environmental threats to health, people who have worked on toxic chemical issues, people who have worked on new developments, and, frankly, people who have not seen wind turbines as a health issue, but rather as an instrument for reducing health problems in societies.

I won't argue that there are no disputes in Europe on the sitting of wind turbines; that's a simple reality. There are very different views on how the landscape should look. There are people who live in a rural setting now who don't want any change in that rural setting. That's a fair basis for making an argument. It's a very different argument from a health argument. There are different feelings about how wind turbines should be owned, but when I talked to people, when I go to the legislative library and ask for research, ask them to get reports from the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet, to do wide-ranging research of the literature, I don't see some mysterious illness or syndrome that arises from wind turbines.

What I do see is that wind turbines can make noise, although, to be honest, living in a city and going up to wind turbines, they seem awfully quiet to me. If that noise is not mitigated by proper siting, then you could have disturbance of people's sleep at night. That can be an issue. I have to say, as someone whose riding abuts the Don Valley expressway, and having lived in an apartment building that overlooked the Don Valley expressway, there's no question that people in urban settings hear a fair amount of noise. People in rural settings may not encounter as much. But there is no mysterious issue here. There's an issue of making sure that the noise levels are such that people are able to sleep well, and that means that wind turbines have to be properly sited.

If I go to the literature from the World Health Organization, there was a fourth ministerial conference held by World Health Organization Europe in 2004. In Energy, Sustainable Development and Health: Background Document, they look at the number of cases of bronchitis per terawatt hour of power produced in children. Terawatt hours-let's just say, a lot of electricity. If you look at the comparison between the different sources of electricity and how they can be compared in terms of their impact on bronchitis, there's coal followed by oil, followed by biomass and gas, followed by waste incineration. At the very bottom are hydro energy, wind and photovoltaic-almost imperceptible on this graph.
So if someone wants to ask about the health impacts of wind turbines, look at the comparison between the different forms of electricity generation in Europe and see that if you're concerned about bronchitis and asthma-and I have to say that in my riding there's a lot of asthma, and parents are very concerned about the issue-then wind turbines are far safer, far cleaner than the other technologies that are available.

If you go to the conclusions of this World Health Organization study, they have to say that, "The different forms of electrical power production are associated with varying health effects on industry workers and the general population.... The European Commission ... found that the effects are greatest from the coal cycle, followed by the oil and gas cycles. Renewable sources, such as photovoltaic and wind energy, are associated with fewer health effects."

They go on to say in their conclusions, "The increased use of renewable energy, especially wind, solar and photovoltaic energy, will have positive health benefits, some of which have been estimated. Studies show that the health and the environmental benefits easily make up for the higher costs associated with renewable energy use."

I would say to Mr. Yakabuski, if you're curious about health studies, look at what the World Health Organization in Europe has produced as a comparison between the different sources of power. It is very clear. It is very clear to those who work with epidemiological evidence, who look at the generation of electricity, which is the safest source of energy.

There's the discussion about noise. World Health Organization Europe produced a study, Night Noise Guidelines for Europe, a few years ago. They looked at the noise that disturbs people. They looked at what the major sources are, and they show a graph in their executive summary that comes out of the Netherlands. Road traffic, neighbours, air traffic and recreation were at the top. They didn't do wind turbines in this study, generally speaking, because the noise issues there are fairly small, but in their recommendations they say that if you're going to have a night noise guideline for Europe, their recommendation is 40 decibels, a way of measuring noise levels-about the sound in a quiet office or a quiet library. That's the standard that's been set in Ontario. That's why there's a setback for wind turbines.

So if our standard in Ontario is the same as that of the World Health Organization in Europe, and they have had a few decades of working with wind turbines, then I would suggest that the authors of this motion we're discussing today look at the literature for the World Health Organization and withdraw the motion they've put forward.
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One issue that comes up when you talk to people who are concerned about wind turbines is something called infrasound: the vibration from the wind turbines. The Journal of Low Frequency Noise, Vibration and Active Control published an article, Infrasound Emission from Wind Turbines, by Jørgen Jakobsen of the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, one of the documents that was provided to me by the library here at the Legislature. I'll quote from their abstract:
"A critical survey of all known published measurement results of infrasound from wind turbines has been made. The survey indicates that wind turbines of contemporary design with an upwind rotor generate very faint infrasound with a level far below the threshold of perception even at a rather short distance.... When longer distances are considered, neither downwind nor upwind turbines are capable of violating assessment criteria for infrasound."

In the UK, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform produced a report by the University of Salford in July 2007. In their conclusions, they note:

"The number of noise complaints about wind farms has been compared with complaint statistics for other types of noise. The total number of complaints about noise generally exceeds those from wind farms by between four and five orders of magnitude, indicating that wind farm noise is a small-scale problem in absolute terms. In relative terms, about 20% of wind farm installations have been subject to complaints, but no data is available to compare this figure with that for other types of noise such as industrial noise."

I'll go back to my point, and that is that wind turbines, like roads, can create noise and thus, if you're going to site them in an area where people live, you have to site them with adequate setbacks so that the impact on those who are living near them is at 40 decibels or lower. If you're doing that, then you are acting in a responsible way, consistent with the health findings of a variety of jurisdictions. If you do something other than that, then you may well cause problems. But that's the threshold. There is not a mysterious health issue that exists beyond that. I don't think there's a problem with studying it further. It's probably a good idea. I would think, at the same time, one should invest in studying the impact of nuclear power, gas-fired power or any other source of power that has an emission or a radiation. To single out wind, I don't think is useful or particularly rational.

I want to speak a bit about other elements that tie into this. I think that we could do better in meeting residents' concerns. This government is focused on corporate-owned wind farms, and they might benefit from involving or setting up more wind co-ops, as they have in Germany and Denmark, where they have found that because people locally own the wind turbines, the complaints about the turbines are dramatically lower. If people are making money from them, they see them as theirs. They see the noise, such as it is, as something that they're willing to make a trade-off with. As you well know, wind turbines are being located on farms in Ontario by farmers who are getting lease or rental payments from those wind turbine companies. So there are people who are making money, as farmers, from those leases, from those rentals. If in fact the ownership was spread around so that more people in an area were making money, rather than have corporations extract the value from a community, there would be much less resistance.

In the United States, in Iowa, there has been tremendous support for wind turbines. It's referred to as the second harvest for many farmers.

I had an opportunity a number of years ago, to meet with farmers from Pincher Creek, Alberta. Those farmers told me that the location of wind turbines on their cattle farms made the difference between staying on the land and being driven off the land. That steady source of revenue made a huge difference to them. You can look at the state of Victoria in Australia. They too are in a situation where farmers make money from the wind turbines that are located on their land.
If we were to follow this resolution, we would fall into a trap. We would miss the opportunity to build an industrial base that reflected 21st-century needs and opportunities. We would miss out on an energy source that is far less impacting and damaging than any other energy source that we would get, such as uranium, nuclear power or gas.

I want to cite a few other health sources.

Wind energy has a much smaller human and environmental impact than coal or nuclear. Dr. Cornelia Baines, a University of Toronto epidemiology professor, states: "Large and well-designed comparative studies have examined the health effects of wind turbines in Holland, England and the US. There is no evidence of any significant negative impact on health."

A recent study by researchers at Stanford University concluded that wind had less impact on human health, water supply, land, wildlife and water pollution than even solar power, geothermal, tidal power, wave power, hydro-electric power, nuclear power and coal.

A September 2009 report by Dr. Ray Copes, director of environmental and occupational health at the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, concluded that, "There is no scientific evidence to date to demonstrate a causal association between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects," although it "sometimes may be annoying to some people, which may result in stress and sleep disturbance." Thus the need to site wind turbines properly so that the noise impact on people's homes is relatively small.

In June 2009, the acting medical officer of health for the Chatham-Kent Health Unit concluded that, "There is no scientifically valid evidence that wind turbines are causing direct health effects, although the body of valid evidence is limited. It is unlikely that evidence of adverse health effects will emerge in the future because there is no biologically plausible mechanism known by which wind turbines could cause health effects."
Yes, there's noise, but after that there is not some mysterious force that causes problems for people. Again, if there is noise, build properly, set back properly, and make sure there is adequate allowance. The standard that we have in Ontario is 40 decibels on average. That's consistent with the night noise guidelines for the European Union and with World Health Organization recommendations.
We don't have a major health problem with wind. We do know we have to site them properly, but I have to say, when we look at the impacts of turbines on the environment-and it was Mr. Barrett who spoke about that, spoke about dead birds-well, frankly, in this city that I'm speaking in right now, there are bank towers and apartment buildings that kill large numbers of birds regularly, and I have not heard yet from this caucus, from the opposition, that they are going to oppose all new construction because it will lead to the death of birds. That is the simple reality: Large glass towers lead to the death of birds.
The National Audubon Society "strongly supports properly sited wind power as a clean alternative energy source that reduces the threat of global warming."

So I've tried to cover off the health issues that this resolution is focused on, but I want to say that we are trying to deal with a variety of issues in this society that are quite substantial. We have to deal with climate change. The member from Ottawa-Orléans spoke to that, but I just want to add this: The simple reality is that this world is getting hotter and we do not know at what point that increasing warming will lead to very substantial negative effects. We don't know at what point it will lead to a change in rainfall patterns so substantial as to dramatically reduce the amount of food that's available. We don't know at what point it will lead to changes in the weather that will make some areas far less habitable than they are now.
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There are many other impacts that are there, but that issue is one that has to be dealt with, and the introduction of renewable power is a critical piece of coming to grips with that. If we were to say, "We won't go forward with one of the most developed, cost-effective renewable energy technologies that's out there today," we would be saying, in effect, that we are accepting that climate change is something that we can't do anything about and we're just going to throw up our hands. That is not a credible position-not a credible position for a Legislature or for a party.
We're dealing with smog in this province. We're dealing with deaths from coal. That is not debated any more. The Ontario Medical Association, a number of years ago, came out with their report that over 9,000 people a year in Ontario die from smog. That is of consequence to us. Introducing technologies that produce electricity without producing smog is extremely important to the health and well-being of the people in this province, and yet we don't have a call for action to stop the development of any new gas-fired plants in this province because of health concerns.

When I introduced a resolution, a private member's bill, a year ago calling for a ban on the construction of a large gas-fired plant in northern York region, I didn't have the support of the Conservative caucus, and yet the people in that region wholly reject that gas-fired power plant. They called on this province for action. They called on this province to give them the power at the municipal level to reject a plant that's being built on a floodplain. I didn't see a resolution around that.
We have those two substantial problems, and we have a third, and that's that we are facing, in the next few years or few decades, a peak in the development or production of oil and gas, and that will have substantial, economically disruptive impacts on our society. It is very important that we rapidly move away from the need for oil and gas. We don't use much oil to make electricity in Ontario; we do use increasing amounts of gas. If we don't have the investment today in cost-effective technologies to produce electricity, we will put ourselves and our society's stability in jeopardy in the years to come.

I've talked in general terms about health and about other technologies. I want to talk a bit more about coal itself because, in fact, that is one of the substantial alternatives to building green power. Wind turbines are part of a spectrum of investments that can be made in green power. We have a crisis of air pollution that is not just a Toronto issue. It's bad in Windsor; it's bad all the way through south-western Ontario. In fact, there are smog days in Muskoka. That comes with a cost: a cost in lives, first of all, to be sure, and that's the most important, but a cost in medical care and lost productivity in the billions of dollars, according to the OMA. Where are the calls for an accelerated shutdown of coal in this province? I have to say I haven't heard it from the energy critic for the Conservative Party, and frankly I haven't heard it from the Liberal government either.
While we're debating the building of wind turbines, we're continuing to burn coal that we don't need to burn and we are not putting in place the steps that we need to put in place to actually make the transition to clean up our air. We don't have rules enforced for energy efficiency for buildings that are going to make the difference that has to be made. I've raised this issue before. We had presentations to that effect in the hearings on the Green Energy Act. That is a critical element, and yet I'm not seeing any action, nor am I seeing opposition day motions on this.

In Portugal, people are required, when they build new houses, to incorporate renewable energy technologies into those houses. We could be doing that. We build inefficient homes. We burn coal. We continue to allow sprawl. All of those things are having a huge impact on human health, but I am not hearing any expressions of concern about that.

I have to say to the government-I have to say to the Liberals and the Conservatives that I am not hearing you call for a 40% reduction in electricity consumption in this province by investing in energy efficiency. Some $60 is being spent on generation for every dollar being spent on efficiency and conservation. It's upside-down priorities. If we want to save money and have an affordable electricity system and rapidly and cost-effectively clean up our air, that's where we have to go. But I have to say, that's not where we're going. That should be the centre of the debate, not a debate about whether or not we're going to invest in renewable energy.
Interjection.
Mr. Peter Tabuns: There we go, on to the next issue, and that's around nuclear power. Recognize this: The Liberals' own targets for renewable power are about 8%, with 50% or more of the power in this province coming from nuclear power. The cost of that will be extraordinary. If we, in fact, go ahead and build two new reactors at Darlington-even though the Liberals have backed off for the moment, saying that $26 billion is something they can't afford, I have to say that I think that's probably the real cost. We will see a variety of manoeuvres to cover that up. It will be funded in some way from general revenue rather than rates, but that probably was a fairly realistic assessment of what that will cost. That is extraordinarily expensive.

At the same time we're considering nuclear-and the member from Renfrew has called for more and more nuclear regularly-what about a review of the health impacts of nuclear energy? That's a substantial issue. It's a very substantial issue.

Instead of getting really serious about efficiency, the Liberals are serious about just one thing: spending more money to get us more in debt by building new nuclear reactors.

Let's talk about health studies and nuclear power. Durham region's radiation and health study in 2007 looked at health outcomes in the vicinity of the Pickering and Darlington nuclear reactors. Authors found statistically significant increases compared to Ontario levels in combined cancers-breast cancer, thyroid cancer, bladder cancer, multiple myeloma, leukemia-and congenital and neural tube defects. I would say that's enough to trigger some action. That's enough to say, "We have to have a moratorium on refurbishing nuclear power plants or building new ones," because in fact when you have studies that look in any depth at nuclear, what you see is cancer.

The German government did a series of studies based on British studies done in 1987 and 1989. The British studies done in that period showed a significantly elevated rate of leukemia in children under 15 within a 10-mile radius of nuclear plants in England and Wales.

In 2008, the Germans' KiKK study was carried out. It was a case-controlled study looking at individual cases of leukemia between 1980 and 2003 for children living near one of 16 nuclear power plants and matching them with children with similar characteristics who did not have leukemia. Residential distance to nuclear power plants was the only measured variable. The research question was, "Are the places of residence of children with leukemia closer to the nuclear power plant than the matched control children?" Studies showed an unequivocal positive relationship between a child's risk of being diagnosed with leukemia and residential proximity to the nearest nuclear power plant. This was statistically significant in the zero-to-five- and five-to-10-kilometre zones, and continued as a trend up to 50 kilometres from the nearest nuclear power plant.
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So if, in fact, we're concerned about health; if, in fact, we want to make sure that we have the best electricity system possible, I would say that we need to reject this motion from the Conservative Party and we need to reject the nuclear push from the Liberal Party. We need to build an electricity system that is extraordinarily efficient, that conserves power, one that takes advantage of 21st-century technologies and rejects those technologies that have shown, through their health impact and their cost, not to be good for Ontario.

I will not be voting for the Conservative resolution and I urge everyone in this House to reject it as well.