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Federal
Environmental Assessment
A federal environmental assessment of the expressway was begun in May 1998, although notice of it was provided to the municipality in the mid-1990s. The assessment began as a "screening" but was bumped up to a full Panel Review in May 1999. This prompted Hamilton to challenge the assessment in court. The assessment continued until February 2000 and then was put on hold. The Federal Court ruled in April 2001 that the assessment was not required. This was upheld on appeal in November 2001. The federal government decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court in January 2002 and instead introduced amendments to the legislation to plug the loopholes created by the court decision.
The End of the Federal Assessment
There will not be a federal environmental assessment of the expressway. The process begun in May 1998 officially ended with the decision of the federal government not to appeal the court decisions of last year that ruled no assessment is required in law.
However, the federal government says it plans to amend the assessment legislation. This shows that they still believe the courts have misinterpreted the assessment act. Interestingly, this is also apparently the view of the City's lawyers who openly advocated amending the act rather than appealing the court verdict. However, despite everyone agreeing that the court got it wrong, none of the three involved governments has anything to offer Red Hill Valley.
It is not possible to determine why the courts got so confused, but there are a few things that might have contributed.
First and foremost was the amount of money spent by the City to confuse them. Council literally wrote a blank cheque to its lawyers in the summer of 1999. They were told it would cost $75,000 to $100,000 to stop the federal assessment. By November of that year, the lawyers had already spent $467,000. Council accepted this gross overspending and authorized running the total bill to $1.2 million. This was also overspent without permission, and eventually the bill hit $2.5 million. The City estimated it spent an additional $2 million on its own staff and other activities.
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Using $4.5 million of our money, the City Council has avoided a process that would have properly reviewed the expressway and forced the City to explain its detailed plans and its reasons for the project. |
Exactly how this money was spent may never be known, because the City and its lawyers have refused to provide a detailed accounting. We know that a portion was spent on lobbyists, but have no information on what role lobbying plays in a court case. We don't know how much the federal government spent on the court case, but feel certain that it was less than 10% of the City's spending, and likely much less than that.
Other factors that might have played a role in determining the outcome include the ruling that limited the role of Friends of Red Hill Valley to providing evidence only about the natural features of the valley. We were forced to sit in silence while the City re-wrote history to fit their claim that irrevocable decisions had been made decades ago, that the valley expressway was merely the extension of the Linc, that impacts of the road had been properly assessed, that re-locating seven kilometres of the creek should not require a permit under the Fisheries Act, and many other opinions presented as 'facts'.
The project faces many more regulatory hurdles as we noted in our November letter — including the unresolved problem of excavating a toxic dump in the path of the road — and a massive financial crisis that appears about to extract more than $1000 a year from homeowners in additional taxes and fees. This includes an extra $425 in water and sewer fees per home, a $180 a year increase to reduce business taxes, and at least $338 a year to increase the budget for maintaining and widening existing roads. These are all permanent increases and the associated increased burden on homeowners doesn't include paying for a new mountain police station ($10.2m), a four-pad arena ($16m), renovation of Wentworth Lodge ($12m), a plan for revitalization of downtown ($14.4m), remedial work at the Rennie and Brampton dumps ($10.5m), and repairs to City Hall ($40m), as well as about $40 million in additional capital projects that were dropped from the 2001 budget as 'unaffordable'.
It is really quite unbelievable that some councillors still think that Hamilton can also afford the Red Hill Creek Expressway. Friends of Red Hill is expanding its efforts to alert the public to these fiscal realities. We have prepared an information bulletin [included with the mailout newsletter]. Over 20,000 were distributed door-to-door in the first three weeks or work. If you can help, please call us at (905) 381-0240.
$4.5 Million Fear
City Council has now decided to allocate another $540,000 to its attempt to stop the federal environmental assessment. This brings the total spending on lawyers and lobbyists to over $4.5 million. Expressway supporters are obviously very nervous about the optics of this spending, hence the attempt to suggest the bill will be paid by the provincial government. However, the real issue is what is the Council trying to hide?
Federal environmental assessment is a well-established procedure for reviewing the implications of decisions. Over 3,000 federal assessments take place every year. Why would someone spend $4.5 million (and potentially much more) to avoid an assessment? This is more than four times as much as the Council has allocated in this year's budget for revitalization of downtown Hamilton.
The Council falsely claims it is trying to "speed up" construction of the expressway. In fact, if it had just cooperated with the federal assessment process, the panel review could have been completed a year ago. The review was called on May 6, 1999 and the rules of the process decree that the panel can only use 13 months to complete its work. That means the review could have been finished by June 2000 if the City had simply provided its information in a timely manner.
This makes it clear that the real problem driving the Council is the fear of an independent scrutiny of its Red Hill decisions. We know some of the reasons for this fear, such as the scandal surrounding the Rennie Street dump. An independent review might bring out that a 1989 expressway consultant study revealed leachate flowing into the creek — a full decade before the City was charged with permitting this to take place, and eleven years before it was fined $480,000 for this crime.
The federal assessment would also thoroughly examine the likely air pollution and health effects of the proposed expressway. It would require the release of the secret studies on the nationally vulnerable Southern Flying Squirrels living in the valley. It would force the City to provide a source for its projected traffic flows, and an explanation of why it is suggesting that only a small part of the traffic will be heavy trucks.
However, the fear illustrated by over $4.5 million in spending to stop the review suggests that other dirty secrets still lie buried, and the Council is determined to keep them buried. Perhaps more than anything else, the willingness to give a blank cheque to the lawyers shows that Hamiltonians have much to fear from a Red Hill Valley Expressway.
Groups Supporting a Full Federal Assessment of the Project
- Friends of Red Hill Valley (700 member community organization)
- 110 McMaster University faculty (April 1999 letter)
- Hamilton Region Conservation Authority
- Federation of Ontario Naturalists
- Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE)
- Bay Area Restoration Council (stakeholders of Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan)
- Bruce Trail Association (provincial level)
- Hamilton Naturalists' Club
- East Hamilton - Stoney Creek Health Association
- Citizens for a Sustainable Community
- Community Action Parkdale East
- Conserver Society of Hamilton and District Inc.
- King's Forest Orienteering Club
- Watershed Action Towards Environmental Responsibility
- Over 770 letters received by DFO by October 1998 asking for a full Panel Review
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