It is often difficult to get real facts from the present Liberal Government installed in Ontario. Former Premier McGinty, who shamelessly let Caledonia down when it needed the support of Government, and now Premier Wynne, have been negotiating with Six Nations to keep up their "green facade".
I have watched helplessly as the giant zombie robots known as wind generators march across the Ontario landscape, murdering all the birdlife in the area with their unfeeling arms. They have stained the landscape from Port Dover in their slow but unstoppable blitzkrieg to the point where they are now on the doorstep of South Cayuga, within the Haldimand Tract. At this point the heat under my collar has risen to intolerable levels. Scams, fraud, under the table deals and so much more. Can we expect anything less from a corrupt government which has handed Caledonia over to the Six Nations as a play toy - "do what you will, we won't intervene, the OPP are now peacekeepers and have been instructed to forget about the old fashioned 'serve and protect' anachronism. What is important is to be culturally sensitive and politically correct - otherwise we may be called 'racists', and that must be avoided at all costs."
It is very difficult to get good facts in this and related matters because the mainstream media do not want to touch this subject, they were literally battered and bruised in Caledonia - so best to focus elsewhere. No mind that there are reporters in Syria who are risking their lives every day - Canadian media does not seem to have the stamina to go after a local story which shows in the clearest of terms that the Provincial Government and the OPP are willing to make sacrificial lambs of a place such as Caledonia which presents an inconvenient truth.
What I do know I have spoken about in previous posts, but to reiterate, the land in South Cayuga Township was first purchased for use as a toxic waste dump. When the citizens presented a solid front with irrefutable facts to show that this was an insane idea, the Government backed down, In the meanwhile they had lands purchased for the purpose, and additional acquisitions of family farms that were expropriated in order to build the fantasy city envisioned to accompany the fantasy industrial complex at Nanticoke. Actually the latter did come to fruition (to a degree), there was virtually zero demand for housing and what was needed was created from the lands bought in Townsend where an actual town was created and 40 or so houses built. Townsend has never been anything other than an embarrassing white elephant. In South Cayuga, the original owners of the land could rent the property if they chose, but it remained Provincial land. First it has to be converted from Provincial land to some other designation before the new off the wall scheme could be put into effect. Since the McGinty Liberals were a "green party", and all those nasty power generating plants which did not meet their exacting standards had to be "retired" to create a need to cover the agricultural land in Southwestern Ontatio with the latest and greatest in green technology - solar panel farms and wind generation "farms".
It was no secret that Six Nations expect to be consulted in any project in the Haldimand Tract (or Southwestern Ontario) whether they had a legitimate claim or not - that is apparently irrelevant. The Six Nations are not aboriginal to the Haldimand Tract, but rather to lands in Upstate New York. In 2012 on the buzzword was "consultation". Some rather clever enterprises had sprung up after the "success" of the take over the Douglas Creek Estates in Caledonia in 2006. Since no one had offered any serious challenge to the Six Nations claim that the DCE were on unceded lands, various groups sprung up to test the limits in this arena. The fact that Six Nations had no claim to any lands beyond the boundaries of the present day Reserve by virtue of the surrender of 1844 was ignored in most quarters. It seems more "polite" to pretend that Six Nations have legitimate land claims within the Haldimand Tract. The fact that all the land was surrendered was acknowledged as legal and binding but the Federal Government in 2009; and was reaffirmed in an Ontario Superior Court ruling in 2010. None the less, fact seemed to have absolutely no bearing on subsequent events.
So with all of this embarrassing land that has been haunting successive governments over the past 30 plus years - a "solution" or sorts was found. Forget about the lack of any validity to the Six Nations claim of possessing "unceded" lands in South Cayuga, link them with the Provincially owned parcels, and pay Six Nations for their permission to develop the lands by Samsung into a wind farm. It all seems too bizarre too ever fly, but it soared.
Despite the fact that the Mohawk Warriors had shown they were in control by imposing their will on the route of transmission lines from Niagara Falls, the pitifully fearful Liberal government negotiated with the Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC), and Samsung was forced to deal with not only this body but also the Hereditary Confederacy Chief's Council (HCCC) who wanted their slice of the pie - turning the messier tasks or collection etc. over to their enforcement wing, the Haudenosaunee Development Institute who were not in the least averse to using threats and intimidation to obtain "process" for the HCCC and the application fees extracted from all developers who would rather that their project not be subject to work stoppages because they failed to recognize the "process". Ultimately SNEC, the legal governance authority at Six Nations, took the lead in negotiations and while transparency was not (nor has it ever been) seen as required, it seems that the Provincial Government was willing to fork over $55 million dollars of the $500 million local deal with Samsung to SNEC for absolutely no legitimate reason what so ever - it was all politics (see here). The Six Nations have no rights under the Nanfan Treaty of 1701 covering Southwest Ontario, nor any rights superseding those of the Crown to lands in the Haldimand Tract - let alone land that was falsely claimed as "unceded". The land was gone before 1844 as seen in the Holmes Report submitted to Justice Harrison Arrell, Brantford Superior Court, in 2009. The "right" to be consulted about projects in formerly owned land is a recent politically correct gift by various levels of government and is just a reflection of the times and the unwarranted guilt over the fact that Six Nations are now left with less than 5% of their former holdings (all lands sold legally and correctly between 1784 and 1850).
The wicket gets even stickier when considering some of the other wind generator deals in other parts of the Haldimand Tract which again Six Nations held nothing remotely resembling a legal title - but that does not seem to matter (see here). After all, if Six Nations are placated, then perhaps there will be no more Caledonia "situations". So Six Nations holds the Province and local governments hostage due to the perceived threat of further "action" whether legal or not. No one seems to have any intention of challenging these "rights" of Six Nations (ironically the supposed "custodians of the environment"), as outlandish and as totally wrong as they might be. Are there governments more "pansy" than ours anywhere on the planet? To blazes with truth, justice, facts, evidence - lets just keep the lid on things and don't rock the boat. This seems to have been the modus operandi to keep the Liberal "green agenda" moving forward with no stumbling blocks. A progress report on this subject is available here from one of my earlier blog postings - and most recently it appears that the figure as to what Six Nations will see from the deal is upped to $75 million - not exactly chump change.
While I have spoken about this matter previously, it is my distinct impression that much discussion of the topic is falling on deaf ears. The negative effects on human health were documented in 2013 by a University of Waterloo study (see here), and the documented impact on wildlife such as golden eagles has resulted in heavy fines for the owners of the wind turbines (see here). Gone are the days of community activism as seen in the 1980s with the Haldimand Norfolk Organization for a Pure Environment (of which I was a member). Unfortunately at this time in my life, direct community activism is out of the picture, so the blog will have to suffice at least for me. So this time residents, because they failed to organize and challenge obvious factual errors such as those relating to the rationale for Six Nations involvement, will be steamrollered. Are residents in the second decade of the second millenium ready to just roll over and give up? That is sad and pathetic.
DeYo.
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