Each example is by a different participant.

[brackets] indicate where data have been omitted to maintain privacy.

…increasing the scientific test that I [as a] taxpayer need to meet. How am I supposed to bring experts to the table months in advance when we have 14 days to prepare paperwork for an ERT, and assemble all our arguments, otherwise we can’t bring them in later? Having forbidden new information should reveal itself. I think the Environmental Review Tribunal is also intentionally weighted against people…I see [name of lawyer] is running the JR [Judicial Review] which is challenging the Green Energy Act. It’s a pretty significant action. In fact, it could wind up in the repealing of the Green Energy Act and what would that do to these harmful projects?

That is the frustration and the shock that really has hit me so far to walk into the ERT and to see our government lawyers sitting and sharing the same table with the proponent, talking to each other, talking out in the parking lot with each other and we could only afford one [cost] an hour lawyer to represent us on the other side. They had Bay Street lawyers…with at least two or three from the Ontario government and then there’s our one little lawyer with an assistant.

The [causality] test is impossible…unfair is the word…the onus of proof being on the individual to prove harm…that is extremely unique in this environment. It’s just unfathomable that somebody would have to prove harm…And to have a Ministry of Environment doing more harm to the environment…for this greater good that scientifically... there is no greater good from this. It was very odd having our government in there against us instead of protecting us.

We followed the ERT [for a proposed IWT project]. We followed the ERT [for another proposed IWT project]. We went there. We listened to the testimony on the environmental side, on the health side. We went to the Falconer and Drennan [ERTs and Court Cases] challenges…the government clearly know there is a problem. They’d like to sweep it under the rug, but they know there’s a problem.

ERTs…the conclusion after several years and it was a learning curve. It comes down to an impossible task and somehow you just keep thinking that maybe someday it’s going to be possible…it’s set up to fail. The time constraints are an issue…it’s dollars that it takes to win these cases…you don’t have the money and to get the experts in…the wind developers can afford three experts to every one expert you put in there…on top of the test itself being impossible…I think the more money you have the more you can win the court, that’s what it boils us down to…if we had billions of dollars and we were a large corporation we could swing it in our favor.

We sat through some of these hearings and tribunals of people that were directly affected, and we’ve met these people…What they [appellants] went through, just to watch them go through that every day, was painful. If you have any empathy for people, what they had to face…I realized they [developer’s witnesses] were getting paid exorbitant amounts of money for the hour of evidence they gave over a television set.

We have been fighting the wind turbines for quite a few years and we really had hopes that the government would see reason and understand that this is not the right place for wind turbines…We kept hoping at each stage like at the ERT surely they would see and rule in our favor at the judicial review...we kept thinking, “Okay, well, that’s all right we’ll carry on.” Each door closed and a wall was put up and there seem to be no other light at the end of the tunnel.