After reviewing the evidence of appraiser Ben Lansink, the court states: “(i)n summary, the plaintiffs’ evidence shows that they have already suffered harm through a loss in property values and the corresponding interference with the use and enjoyment of their properties.” [Para. 9] “The plaintiffs have filed expert appraisal evidence indicating that their properties are likely presently devalued by between 22 to 50 per cent or more, based upon the Proposal as presented.” [Para. 31] “… :(I)n this case the court accepts that the plaintiffs have suffered, and are currently suffering, losses culminating in diminished property values …” [Para. 34, emphasis added]
h/t Lois
Now.When is our provincial and federal gubermints going to start the criminal cases against the cAGW cultists?
I’m no lawyer, but that sounds like a pretty fundamental endorsement of property rights in Ontario to me. If I’m reading it right, it seems to be treating the loss of property value and quiet enjoyment at the hands of this particular type of public policy to be akin to, or a form of expropriation for which compensation must be provided.
Quite apart from that, the ruling should pretty much put paid to the Ontario wind power fiasco: who’s going to invest in a business where the courts have just introduced the probability of unknown and unquantifiable contingent future liabilities? And how is anybody going to provide or purchase private insurance against any of that? In the same way, how would the Province provide any form of public insurance, other than a politically-unacceptable increase in the wind fee-in tariff/standard offer, which they aren’t able to calculate anyway for all the same reasons? And the court ruling should hang the Sword of Damacles over the approval process as well, giving the intervenors opposed a new tool.
Sound like it all might be pretty good.
Anyone who thinks these things are just real groovy and will “save the planet”, as the idiots and their string pullers yodel, should have to spend a day in the middle of them fencing or doing something with no radios on, no other noises, just the lovely sound of the giant bird blenders. They will soon see why this ruling is important. There is and will be rich “green” charlatans, and soon to be rich domolition crews all on taxpayers dimes because of this lunacy. And Suzuki and Gore and the politicians who gleefully allowed this stupidity, live miles and miles from these blights, feeling warm and fuzzy they contribute so little power to the system while reading a bedtime story about the evil coal fired plant being shut down for the good of the planet.
A confirmation there was a good reason why all these McGuinty “green” projects occur outside Mississauga and GTA – certainly the first official incidence of a government adopting the NIMBY principle in its energy policy. Look at your ever-increasing electric bill (soon to include litigation settlement taxes) and understand this is the result of catering to the urban dementia in the GTA.
If Ontario does not pull the plug on the McGuinyites, they really deserve to be jobless and freezing in the dark.
And you’d be exactly correct. The question is, though, and leaving aside my supposed “transparent partisanship”, how are we in Ontario likely to give practical effect to your final statement?
Vote for Ms. Wynne? Vote NDP? Complain about Tim Hudak like we complained about Mitt Romney (for all the fat lot of good that did us)? Vote Christian Heritage?
The Liberals have protected the turbines so far from municipalities and economics. Municipalities are blocked from making siting restrictions and cannot tax them at the same rates as other like property. Economics are busted through the provincial electrial utility.
If this type of lawsuit becomes an issue, McWynnty might use legislation to block it. Question is, would the NDP go along with it or what NDP pet project would McWynnty have to agree to in order to buy off the NDP.
Dandy. And those giant ^$%#@*g mirrors in your neighbour’s fields reduce property value by what…20 to 30 percent?
Just exactly whose property rights are we protecting here? This ruling has far broader implications than “just windfarms”. You guys are truly short sighted if you don’t think this can’t be in turn applied to pig farms, cattle operations, those unsightly grain bins, pump jacks and so on.
Bear – also to the construction of high density dwellings in cities. They trash the property values of houses near them.
In my city the mayor and council are gleefully building ‘affordable’ housing in one, poorly represented side of the city. They don’t seem to fit in anywhere else.
A successful law suit would save some older areas.
I recently attempted to discuss the disadvantages of wind power with one of these folks who have no critical thinking skills, and I realized that it was pointless. One the brain-washing has taken hold (based on wishful thinking) nothing will penetrate. (Yes but we can supply ALL the earth’s energy needs with windmills–green, no pollution and so forth). What is sad is such people vote. They serve on committees, boards, and political parties that make public policy. They provide the echo chambers for Suzuki and his ilk. I think in terms of education and scientific understanding, we have tipped to our way to the dark ages.
Bear: In theory you may be right, but in Ont at least, agriculture is protected by strict zoning bylaws according to municipalities official plans. These plans include setback distances for new houses and severances in relation to barns and farm buildings. This to prevent the type of situation mentioned. Are these cast in stone, no zoning laws ever seem to be, but they are there specifically to protect farming as a business. On the other hand, the GEA specifically bypasses all such municipal planning and puts the decision on wind turbine plants strictly at Queens Park Toronto. So wind turbines nay be built anywhere the government degrees, except that will never, ever be in GTA or any other urban areas. The whole idea of the Orwellian term “wind farms” is to somehow to suggest they are connected with agriculture, nothing could be further from the truth.
Absolutely correct. Us poor jamoches that live in the hinterlands are stuck with these pieces of crap to cater to the brain dead urban elites.
Case in point. One of the best locations for these things is along the north shore of Lake Ontario but you will never see one there because they might offend the urban dwellers. NIMBY writ large.
Oh, and about those gas plants…….
What a great ruling – almost hard to believe. For far too long in Ontario, and indeed everywhere in Canada, property owners have had complete freedom to devalue properties adjacent to theirs without any compensation being paid.
I don’t give a damn if it is a wind farm, a pig ban, turning your place into a dump, letting your hells angles buddies move in, if you devalue your neighbour’s property through actions on your property, you should have to pay.
Many people have their life’s savings in their homes, and this idea that you can demolish the value of your neighbour’s property and not pay is criminal.
Martin, not in theory – in practice. Zoning is a matter of a planning commission or political body voting, it protects nothing and we at the whim of the political/societal mood of the day. What’s good one day may be bad the next. Cheering this ruling on is not only short sighted, it’s naive.
I’d rather live within 500 yds of a new gas plant producing 500MW of electricity than a windmill producing 3MW, and only when the wind blows. It would be less intrusive into your life.
I’m not sure bear, I doubt this ruling could ever be applied to sue an existing operation like your hypothetical pig farm. And yes, if someone wants to start up a new operation, they should look at what affect this will have on existing properties.
Bear, at this point in my life I’ve known far too many people who have been burned by utterly inconsiderate neighbours. The stories I could tell.
Properties are assets that have tangible value. If your actions cause the depreciation of another person’s property asset, you should have to pay. If you don’t pay, then it is no different than stealing a piece of that asset for your own self-interest.
The “neighbour-be-damned” attitude is extremely prevalent these days. It is about time the courts woke up.
Bear….there have been civil suits against the types of uses you seem concerned about. There have been awards made to landowners for pumpjacks, etc. Now the cloak of protection for stupid windmills is being torn off. About bloody time too. They are a disgrace and are monuments to stupidity.
Bear: No planning is perfect, but the rules I described do have some effect to protect agriculture in Ont.
Having been totally stymied by all regulatory and administrative blocks erected by the Ont government to support industrial wind plants, this is the first small victory for property owners. All other tribunals and license boards are completely stacked in favour of Ont government and the wind companies. Even the setback distance to homes 550m is a joke, based on no scientific data simply trial and error with the residents as guinea pigs. Quebec last week set there distance at 2 km, though they don’t have very many plants.
Ont has ignored all health and safety issues for adjacent residents.Home Owners have been forced to hire their own lawyers to compete with Ont, battery of Environment legal team, paying both sides and up till now losing.
What other course do home owners have? Many have simply walked away from their houses or accepted fractional prices but that is not an option for most. There is no other choice with the present rules in place.
Now we may hope that wind farms are subject to proper environmental reviews. How well would they fare if examined as nuclear reactors are?
I see there is still snide tone in your replies to me David, I don’t usually salve egos or apologise for brusing them but in the interest of civility and open dialogue I will respond -this is of course with my personal opinion open to rebuttal but not ad hominem attacks.
First this isn’t about energy mismanagement or open malfeasance, these are just symptoms and they seem to afflict all brands of partisan organizations once in power. We have a system problem. Responsible representative governance has broken down – POGG is not the norm In Ontario. The problem is unaccountability in Government/leadership and runaway mission creep. The problem of runaway government will never be solved by working within the current devolved political system – hoping one party will be better than the last. This is just a revolving door for dysfunctional regimes. Real change, and keeping government honest, responsive and accountable comes from vigilant grass roots activism and participation in the democratic syatem.
In this case there is plenty of opportunity for Ontarians to file action against the government for malfeasance and breech of public trust, but what chance is there of that in your current state of zombie-like apathy? It is not good enough to simply vote the corrupt regime out of power – the guilty must be held to account. You have to hang a few bandits before the bandit community (politicians) get the idea we are watching and won’t abide a kleptocracy or crony brokerage regimes.
When Ontarians actually take an interest in cleaning up government,when they see that honest accountable small government is in their best interest (fiscally and socially), they will form effective grass roots watch dog NGOs so things will change. In the current state of Queen’s Park politics changing parties will have little effect – unless a true leader and populist democrat appears with a solid long term plan to put the province on track economically and deconstruct the size and power of government so crony influence and corruption is limited.
But to satisfy your partisan curiosities – IF I was to pick a party to do this , I would say the Freedom party is a good bet, but they are not media patrons so getting their message out will be near impossible. The next best bet is to elect enough independents in hopes of forming an independent effective opposition. Frankly, I’ve lost all hope for the current political/party system in TO and Ottawa because the game of politics and the special interest cronies have become so corrupt and diabolical,that honest, visionary ethical people/leaders are not attracted to seek public office.
bear, you have that right about at the whim of political/societal mood of the day, as generally the last section of every municipal bylaw says”at the discretion of council”
there is a thing called title insurance, and if title is clouded then they can be forced to step in, especially is ,value recovery for institutional financing becomes an issue. I can already see the title insurance backers lawyering up for this fight. This certainly could be the straw that breaks the lieberal’s camel’s back:-)))
“…I’m no lawyer, but that sounds like a pretty fundamental endorsement of property rights in Ontario to me. If I’m reading it right, it seems to be treating the loss of property value and quiet enjoyment at the hands of this particular type of public policy to be akin to, or a form of expropriation for which compensation must be provided…”
Gee, if you only knew how much I wished that was the case, DS.
But this should not be construed as an endorsement of property rights in Ontario. It is simply an ‘okay’ to proceed with another lawsuit for damages – a very ordinary process that occurs hundreds of times a day in Canada.
Before anyone can rest easy on the property rights issues, we need two things: a “Property Rights Protection Act’ at the provincial level, and the inclusion of property rights to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Bang on. This indeed opens up all the wind projects to lawsuits AFTER they are in service for loss of property value. I think Jamie is right; it’s not a general endorsement of property rights, only in this specific case. It’s a very appropriate rebuttal to the GEA’s suspension of municipal approvals and zoning regulations.
As to practical alternatives, short of living in a fantasy universe, there’s only one political party opposed to the GEA, has some chance of winning an election and vows to repeal it, and that’s Hudak’s Conservatives.
Wind cannot even qualify for such a test. There are no segregated decommissioning funds as there are for nuclear. A technology can only be compared if it meets all of the requirements that the benchmark meets.
I think your ideas and commentary are truly great: at least you, er, explain them, and I have benefited greatly by those explanations. Lots of people, including me, are trying to figure these things out, too, and I very much appreciate all of your insights — my “partisanship”, such as it is, comes down to one very simple thing: I do not believe anything the Liberals say, and am not in the market for anything they have on offer — particularly the current round of farce (nationally and in Ontario).
Please refer to my last response on the thread where we got into this admittedly minor scuffle in the first place. Never infer, please, a rebuttal to any one of your ideas as an attack on you, but, rather, a difference of opinion on the subject at hand.
“Bang on.”: if it’s not too much to ask, my friend, please don’t use that expression in regard to anything I post — a direct attack on my sorry-ass existence would actually feel much better, since “Bang on.”, along with “It’s my TOP priority.”, sounds way too much like Paul Martin, and I know that you are way smarter than that guy ever was.
Fair enough; that expression is dead.
As for the rest, I don’t know about “smarter”. By all accounts Martin was a very intelligent man. However, his great failing was his inability to focus on a single thing and carry it through to completion. Execution was often lacking when he was PM. For example, it was Martin committed Canada to the mission in Kandahar. It became clear that, despite warnings from Defence, he and the rest of his inner cabinet had little idea of how truly dangerous and “hot” this mission was. It is to the eternal credit of the army that it was able to pull his irons out of the fire for him.
Canada may be the only country ever to engage in military operations in Afghanistan and emerge with an enhanced military reputation since Alexander the Great. Most nations and empires in history have experienced the reverse.