As more and more residents push back against large cell towers in their neighbourhoods up and down the island, some local governments are starting to actually listen to the residents’ concerns about the Health Aspects, even though the Federal Governments has told them to not engage in the health aspect when debating.
“The Comox Valley Regional District meeting room on Monday at 10 am was filled to the point of standing room only! Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to show up to the meeting and sit through until the tower topic came up. And thanks to every single person who took some time to write in about this tower, there were some excellent letters with really great questions and points!”
It was an interesting meeting. The last time that council met about the tower in July, the telecom consultant, Brian Gregg of SitePath, did not show up. This time, we didn’t see him, but rather one of his support team members, Heather Oliver, was present. Three representatives from ISED (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada) were present. City Planner, Stephanie, read out each of their names but no last names were noted beside their names as meeting attendees on Zoom. Ken spoke for ISED but did not turn on his camera. No titles or role explanations were provided for the ISED representatives.
In the end, after much discussion, a motion to deny the application (at this point) was moved unanimously! It was confirmed that this application is specific to where the proposed tower was to be located on the property. Keep your eye on the local paper for any future cell tower proposals in this area.
Really great job to the residents of Williams Beach Road that went door to door talking to their neighbours, educating them and collecting petition signatures!!!! It’s amazing what a community can do together—this is one of those wonderful moments and examples! The Williams Beach sensitive wetland and migratory bird habitat was saved from 24-7 radiation that would have been permanently emitting from this proposed 63-meter-tall cell tower!
Once again, a big thank you again to everyone that showed up to the meeting, wore a button and looked at the directors and staff. They saw and heard us. It made all the difference having all of us there, as did all of the correspondence that was shared with the directors. Way to go everyone!!!!” – Williams Beach Resident
Here’s a few quotes from the meeting: Director Arbour said, “Finally ISED is here, but we’ve been asking for about four years for them to come out but if they’re just coming as a resource in the corner, not prepared to present any information on how they make decisions on the health aspects of cell towers and all of those key concerns that keep arising in community again and again, again and again.”
Director Hardy said, “I’m just wondering about the required public consultation process. What kind of public consultation did Rogers have with the public regarding the tower other than the one zoom meeting that they had with the public. I guess I would put my question towards the public and I’m not sure how, when or how you go about doing that but would the public consider one zoom meeting with Rogers as wholesome and reasonable consultation with the community with regards to the proposed location of the tower.”
Director Arbour said, “This almost must be like a national problem because with every one of these applications that we receive, we typically receive the, you know 90–95% negative responses from people that are nearby these towers or other constituents. So for ISED what is value if your going to go through these processes and receive all of this negative feedback and then say, well we approve the tower. Is it just because somewhere in Parliament, somewhere there is a legislated mandate that you need consultation because it seems that a lot of the consultation that happens results in a lot of negative response. So, it’s a bit of a broken consultation process in my opinion.” “So, what is ISED’s view of the consultation process? Is there intent to reform the consultation process across Canada?”
Director Arbour said: “[I] may ask that at a subsequent meeting the regional district perhaps heads that way and be forward-thinking.” (He said this in response to the idea of municipalities being forward thinking and having their own policy regarding zoned areas for siting cell towers.)
Director Hardy said: “one of the things I’ve seen over the past couple of years of being involved with the board and having these conversations revolving around telecommunication towers is again, quite often what I see is that the consulting firm that is working for one of these communication companies comes in and says, this will be the new location for the tower it can’t be located anywhere else, it has to be on this exact spot. And what I have not seen over the years is an openness by the telecommunications companies to collaborate with our constituents and to collaborate with the CVRD staff regarding an appropriate place, location of the tower. And again, I go back to Director Arbour’s comments or thoughts with regards to if there’s going to be another six to eight that need to be put up in the Valley, let’s sit down as a group, as a whole and say on a map here’s the location that is going to work best for everyone. Instead of the telecommunication’s company coming in and saying here’s where the tower is going to be and that’s it. What we’ve also heard over the last couple of years from our constituents is that there is a huge concern around health and safety.” “And we’ve all heard of Health Canada and their Code 6 and you know, the communications companies saying that, hey you know we are adhering to conditions of Health Canada Health’s Code 6 and consequently, we don’t want to hear any other issues or concerns regarding the impacts of the tower. However, it’s the local government here that is hearing from our constituents about the concerns about public health and safety from these towers going up.”
We also understand that there may be environmental issues that aren’t being delved into by ISED. And I guess the concern that I have here is again, from a public health and safety perspective with regards to placement of these towers and the impact upon our constituents and the environment, is that there doesn’t seem to be any recognition from ISED on that process. And again, ISED, the primary authority with regards to these towers being put up, but we still haven’t seen any consultation from Health Canada to our constituents with regards to addressing their concerns about this code 6 and the telecommunications towers. So, I’m just wondering again where ISED is with regards to how they go about addressing concerns our constituents share with placements of these towers in and around residential areas?”
Director Hardy also said, “If ISED cannot answer the health questions that our constituents have and the concerns that they have here. Then is it not the obligation of ISED to ensure that Health Canada come and have a presentation to our constituents, and allow our constituents to have that ability to ask questions with regards to health? And I haven’t seen that within the public consultation process that the consultants have had with the constituents of the Comox Valley or with the area of concern here. So, again the question I ask, if ISED cannot answer the health questions and defers to Health Canada, does not ISED have the obligation to have Health Canada come and address the questions that are being put forward by our constituents and provide the information to our constituents about health code 6 and how that all works?”
Director Grieves said: “Personally, I don’t support the tower where it is at all right now. It’s grandiose, it’s too much on everyone’s lap.”
If people want more info on pushing back, they can contact VISTA – Vancouver Island Safe Tech Alliance VISafeTechAlliance@proton.me They will share all the presentation materials created and collected (including petitions and flyers) and a ton of other info with people so they can use it as a starting ground to create their own materials for their area.
