Ottawa Citizen: Eastern Ont. to get $1B energy plant

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John Hollins

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Nov 14, 2025, 12:19:12 PMNov 14
to Cacor-discussion, cacor-public
It's rare for me to find that Premier Ford has got something right. But it's an accident; his thinking is entirely conventional economic politics. There is no mention od environmental/ecological benefit. Scientifically illiterate, par for the course for politics in Canada.

On Dobbie Road, just northeast of Spencerville, a new battery energy storage system (BESS) facility is being built on a former farmland property.

Battery energy storage facilities work by purchasing electricity from the grid during periods of lower demand, storing that power, then discharging the energy during peak demand times.



Microsoft Word - Document12.pdf

Art Hunter

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Nov 14, 2025, 1:41:46 PMNov 14
to John Verdon, Cacor-discussion, cacor-public
This sounds like a prostitute revealing her best assets to customers.  

In the energy sector it seems like economic assets are the best to advance to some customers.  

In Ontario Ford is heavily subsidizing electrical energy already.  But to those who don't understand this behind the curtain play, the economic asset seems solid.   

It is always the case that politicians operate in a one dimensional world called economics when there is the much bigger elephant in the room called climate change.  

Last night I attended a Liberal party dinner gathering and told Fanjoy after his speech, that he didn't even mention climate change as his focus was on affordable housing and healthcare.  He said they are very active in this file but had an urgent need to attend to when I asked about heatpumps and EV incentives. 

I chased down our riding MPP (Blais) and engaged him in a similar way as his address ignored climate change.  He in essence said that climate change was at the bottom of its political wave and would be back in a couple of years.  Then he had something urgent to attend to.

Both talked like the fossil fuel industry briefing notes.  Make platitudes and kick the can down the road.  

I am still staggering under the load of a climate change model that comes in waves.   Never growing at accelerating rates but up and down like gentle waves.

This is so shocking.  I know I was being dismissed by the fossil fuel lobby and their long reach.

It was not a good evening.




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Cheers,
John

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Geoff Strong

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Nov 14, 2025, 1:56:48 PMNov 14
to cacor-di...@googlegroups.com, John Verdon, cacor-public

Art,

 

But isn’t that exactly the way Carney has behaved ?  There is nothing substantial in their platform to date on renewable clean energy, with some emphasis on the ‘clean’. At a time when we need reassurance from our politicians (at all levels), we’re not getting anything.

 

It’s not been a good year, never mind your evening. 

 

Geoff

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Bob Este

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Nov 14, 2025, 4:37:05 PMNov 14
to 'John Hollins' via cacor-discussion, Art Hunter, John Verdon, cacor-public
Dear all:

I admit that what I offer in this four-part note is, for the most part, woefully inadequate and incomplete. Even with this qualification, this offering may provide useful illumination of and context for how we do (and don’t) collectively make decisions to conceptualise, craft and action our own governance of ourselves (that is, for as long as we can, while we are still able to do so).

(Art, my direct response to your note appears in [4], below.)

I write what follows to hopefully add some value to considerations of the politics of energy. 

[1] The Overton Window

Only a few years ago, this NYTmes item appeared < https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/politics/overton-window-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1E8.sEwU.XAll0akj2QYM&smid=url-share > ... nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be ... how light and fluffy and innocent were those days ... < https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2023/the-legacy-of-the-overton-window > …

Although IMHO Overton was very much right about offering the window as a useful conceptual tool, it is now quite clear that the house where his window was once installed has been torn down, blown up and the whole town burned to the ground (wars and conflagrations of different kinds tend to do that sort of thing).

Not only that, the countries and our cultures and our “worlds" where the window used to work relatively well as a kind of shorthand, a sort of “lens” that could be used to view, to organise our thoughts about, to describe, and even to understand something about real shifts on changing political landscapes have begun to self-destruct (polycrises anyone?) … all of those things have been deeply perturbed.

Knowing this to be the case, recollections about the dynamics and viewpoints offered through consideration of the Overton Window could be of interest and may help us sort out — or perhaps a better idea — of where we are headed.

[2] Establishing Terms of Reference for Governance

This is important because it seems obvious that we humans continue to live together in groups and associations of different sizes and shapes. This is clearly what we always do for a host of interrelated reasons — after all, even when we invent and employ various scientific and technical interventions and tools, which we have done for a very long time, we still have little choice but to live together. Point being that no matter how “individualistic” or “collective” we may conceive ourselves to be (and for various reasons construct powerful beliefs about how we should arrange things to live more or less together), we will, by unavoidable default, always be engaged in our own governance of ourselves.

How, then, do we negotiate the terms of reference for this governance?

To address this question, recollections about the utility of the Overton Window may be helpful. These recollections may shed some useful light onto the governance spectrum upon which all of our organisational enterprise efforts can (and by logical argument, must) be placed — and where they can be shifted and moved (which movements, from time to time, seems inevitable).

As you well know, we have collectively come to understand that our unavoidable governance spectrum has two extreme “ends".

[2.1] The Rule of Law

The fist “end” features the ongoing, open and deliberative dialogues that characterise full, rational, caring, shared, collaborative representative democracy, always actioned in and through the evolving interests of all its members through the Rule of Law, as it has taken shape in its various forms.

I’ve previously recommended to CACOR the fine work of Tom Bingham to help clearly illuminate this first end of the governance spectrum; I will here recommend his book again: < https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/56375/the-rule-of-law-by-tom-bingham/9780141034539 >; < https://binghamcentre.biicl.org/our-vision >; < https://www.amazon.ca/Rule-Law-Penguin-Adult-HC/dp/1846140900 >.

Others, not mentioned here, have also written clearly, usefully and well about the challenges and benefits of all of the Rule of Law.

[2.2] The State of Exception

On the other “end” of the governance spectrum, we are faced with the authoritarian, militarised, aggressive, dictatorial “grabbing” and closed centralisation of wealth and power, articulated by any means possible, actioned only for the benefit of a select few, all at the total and completely disempowering and often murderous expense of the many. 

The State of Exception, along with the concept of “Bare Life”, extinguish and erase the Rule of Law, as well as any memory of the Rule of Law. They bring into stark relief the very raw, anti-humanist and extreme opposite end of our spectrum of governance. To grasp and understand it reasonably well, I’ve previously recommended to CACOR two of Giorgio Agamben’s foundational books. Here they are once more:



Again:  others, not mentioned here, have also written clearly, usefully and well about the mechanisms and end results of The State of Exception. 

Personally, I think the work that Agamben accomplished in these two above-mentioned books does a very good job of providing for us very useful views, through a “species” of Overton Window that, in turn, can provide useful perspectives on where a vast range of moves continue to evolve and occur on the spectrum of organisational governance.

[3] Where to, from here?

IMHO knowing and understanding as much as possible about the workings of our spectrum of governance, and how to best participate as usefully and as well as possible within it — by carrying out close reads of Bingham and Agamben, just for starters or to serve as very useful “touchstone” reminders — may help in more effectively distinguishing among and framing essential technical, political and conceptual arguments in all related public policy realms, to the least important of which has to do with the societal futures of energy.

[4] Direct response

Art, your dismissal as you’ve recounted it is a powerful reminder to all of us about what occurs when the engines and agents of The State of Exception flex their self-regarding and self-reinforcing muscles and do whatever they can to shut off, eliminate, erase and then forget any truly democratic efforts to move forward with rational dialogue, on ANY issue — and especially with regard to the combined political, technical and conceptual energy policy issues that face us today.

At least they didn’t frog march you out into the darkened parking lot to remind you who is boss. I truly hope such a march never happens. 

Onwards / best wishes / Bob Este



On Nov 14, 2025, at 11:41 AM, Art Hunter <art....@gmail.com> wrote:

This sounds like a prostitute revealing her best assets to customers.  

In the energy sector it seems like economic assets are the best to advance to some customers.  

In Ontario Ford is heavily subsidizing electrical energy already.  But to those who don't understand this behind the curtain play, the economic asset seems solid.   

It is always the case that politicians operate in a one dimensional world called economics when there is the much bigger elephant in the room called climate change.  

Last night I attended a Liberal party dinner gathering and told Fanjoy after his speech, that he didn't even mention climate change as his focus was on affordable housing and healthcare.  He said they are very active in this file but had an urgent need to attend to when I asked about heatpumps and EV incentives. 

I chased down our riding MPP (Blais) and engaged him in a similar way as his address ignored climate change.  He in essence said that climate change was at the bottom of its political wave and would be back in a couple of years.  Then he had something urgent to attend to.

Both talked like the fossil fuel industry briefing notes.  Make platitudes and kick the can down the road.  

I am still staggering under the load of a climate change model that comes in waves.   Never growing at accelerating rates but up and down like gentle waves.

This is so shocking.  I know I was being dismissed by the fossil fuel lobby and their long reach.

It was not a good evening.




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