In today’s Globe and Mail is the headline: Oil tycoon takes on Ontario Green Energy Act over wind farm.
Under NAFTA rules, foreign investors can file a NFATA challenge to the federal government if they feel they have been discriminated against.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/oil-tycoon-takes-on-ontario-green-energy-act-over-wind-farm/article2097575/
So while this article is about wind energy and the Federal government being challenged because the Province of Ontario allegedly changed the rules in mid-game on this company, remember a large foreign owned company could take the same action regarding an aggregate application.
The Council of Canadians has been warning about the flaw in NAFTA for years.
Various provincial governments (over many years I might add) have been lobbied by the rich aggregate industry and in small increments through legislation and regulation changes have skewed the Aggregate Resources Act in favour of the aggregate industry.
These leg and reg changes were really not all that noticeable when someone wanted to dig a 100 acre above the water table gravel pit, but have become all too clear in recent years (Flamborough, Caledon and now Highland/Baupost)
And now politicians are being faced to reap what they have sown.
While the average citizen can’t afford $5,000.00 a plate at political fundraisers, the average citizen, UNLIKE corporations DO vote. So there is the crux of the matter.
Political parties want to the corporate money to fund their political organizations but they need the vote to actually get re-elected.
Analysis? This is going to cost taxpayers one way or the other at all levels, local, provincial and federal.
We pay the politicians and bureaucrats to put the rules in place, pay the politicians and bureaucrats while they are being lobbied, we pay at the grassroots level to fight our own government against the skewed rules resulting from the lobbying, and then we pay again at the federal level if the big corporations are unhappy.
In the words of Winston Churchill:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time
Thank you for this posting. I think it might be your best yet. People are finally beginning to object to the rest of what's going on here! As well as the potential loss of agricultural land and threat to water if the quarry is permitted, Lowndes and family and investors/Highlands, Klarman/Baupost, Daniher/Special Situations, Dewan, Harnick et al/Counsel Public Affairs, Broadhead/Hill and Knowlton and others are all part of the machinery that, along with neutral or ill equipped or complacent or ambitious politicians, have put into place "leg and reg" including the ARA, Green Energy Act, NAFTA and, soon now that we have a majority federal government, CETA that are offences to us all!
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