Parker Gallant's 2nd Open Letter To Elections Ontario

Parker Gallant

October 14, 2011

Open Letter to Elections Ontario

Mr. Jonathan Batty,

Director of Election Finances and General Counsel,

Elections Ontario,

51 Rolark Drive,

Toronto, ON.,

M1R 3B1

Dear Mr. Batty:

Further to my letter of October 11, 2011 I would ask that you add the following three (3) entities to the list of 13 that were in the aforementioned letter.

Those are:

1. Ecology Ottawa: Founded in 2006, this entity as noted in this link lauched a petition after the dropping of the election writ: “Sept. 21, 2011, Ottawa – Ecology Ottawa officially launched a petition campaign yesterday, urging Ottawans to voice their support for the feed-in-tariff program to ensure we all enjoy clean air, and more than 850 people have already signed on.” At the bottom of this media posting headed; “Ottawans asked to voice their support for clean energy” is a notice which states “Please find the related “Background document attached.” and if you go to that document there is a 2 page “backgrounder” and at the bottom of the 2^nd page another link which takes the reader to comeclean.ca which was the first party named in my prior letter. The petition was clear in its support of the “feed-in-tariff” (FIT) program which was a product of the prior Liberal Government and which the other parties had vowed to either scrap or alter. This is a clear violation of the Elections Finances Act if Ecology Ottawa spent more then the alloted $500.00. Ecology Ottawa has received $727,000 from the Trillium Foundation since 2007. In addition Ecology Ottawa is not to be found on the Ontario Lobbyist Registry dispite their obvious lobbying efforts.
2. Ontario Clean Air Alliance: The OCAA purports (about 83 listed) to have “90 organizations (health and environmental organizations, faith communities, municipalities, utilities, unions and corporations) that represent over six million Ontarians.” but only 13 of them are actual corporations and all of those are involved in some form in “renewable energy” and therefore beneficiaries of the Green Energy Act (Act). The other 77 are as noted in their description and also have a vested interest in the Act. A number of them were mentioned either directly or implied (unions) in my prior letter and many are municipalities or utilities that are taxpayer supported. The OCAA on Oct 1, 2011 issued a “Bulletin” entitled “Make your vote count for the environment” dated September 30, 2011 with a link to green prosperity (refer # 9. Sierra Club in my letter of October 11, 2011) to the “videos” found on it and to the “report card”. OCCA in this same “Bulletin” encourage people to orded a “free election phamplet, The Billion dollar Question that Tim Hudak Needs to Answer,” That this whole effort by OCAA is clearly biased and presumably cost them more then $500.00 is yet another entity that Elections Ontario should investigate.
3. Friends of Wind or Friends of Wind: The first link is to CanWEA (Canadian Wind Energy Association whereas the 2^nd link is to another site that is/was reputedly founded by an individual that purported to support wind energy as an unbiased farmer and observer. This individual Jutta Splettstoesser when interviewed on a radio talk show on CKNX when asked the number of members of “Friends of Wind” claimed only 5 members. She travelled the Province, was promoted by OSEA (see # 4. on prior letter of October 11, 2011) and spoke at a number of events expounding on the wonders of wind energy, alongside Gideon Forman of CAPE and Paul Seccaspina of Oraclepoll Research Limited who conducted a poll for both “Friends of Wind” and another for OSEA. I am confident that these polls would have cost in excess of $500.00 unless Mr Seccaspina loves wind energy so much he did it for free. The larger question that I see on this one is did CanWEA, an organization with in excess of 400 members of whom many are large multinational companies and very large law firms, somehow agree to relinquish the use of the name (and by inference their reputation) to Jutta Splettstoesser of “Friends of Wind” or were they the instrument that helped to create it? In my humble opinion that is a significant issue that Elections Ontario or the Attorney General should explore in some depth.

Yours truly,

Parker Gallant,

a concerned citizen

NOTE: Mr. Gallant's 1st open letter to Elections Ontario is post here