Kevin Brady

Comments: Quality of our air is an important issue for all of us that, from a macro perspective will require effort on the part of the United States and Canada to resolve. Having said that, there is a lot each of us can do to reduce our emissions. I recently moved my company from Markham to Oshawa because all my staff live in the Oshawa area. Although insignificant from a global perspective, it made a huge impact on the quality of life of my staff and myself while reducing our gasoline consumption by 75%. We can all make a difference.

Comments: This question does not go far enough in addressing the issues. We need to address sources of pollution from existing sources as well as new sources. A comprehensive approach with co-operation of the stakeholders within the community is the only viable approach.

Comments: I believe this question avoids the real issue which is why must people commute to find a good job. I believe we need to focus on job creating within our communities to reduce the need to travel great distances to work.

Comments: I think the Provincial strategy may not consider all of the factors in economic development. Although I am not an economist, I am a student of it. I think we need to study what drives economic development in a community and in particular, what drives CEOs of medium and large companies to locate them where they do. We may find that the provincial strategy may drive people of significant wealth, those who own medium and large companies to the large urban centers where they can find estate housing sutable to their needs. I suspect we would find that they locate their businesses in the large urban centers so they live near their business. Unfortunatly that may mean their employees must live in surrounding communities and commute. We may find that if we developed estate housing, we could entise more medium and large sized businesses to our region and eliminate the need for people to commute to Toronto.

Comments: It is not enough to protect the farmland, we need to create an economic model that encorages the use of the farmland to produce food. We need a "Farm Fresh" initiative to educate and encourge consumers to buy local. Most large food chains do not buy locally because they want to strike a single deal for all their stores and small farms just cannot get into the market. Strangly that means that much of the high quality Ontario produce is shipped to up scale resturants in the U.S.

Comments: My house backs onto the west tributary of the Oshawa Creek, in addition I have been active is Scouting for over 20 years so the environment is a key concern of mine. I am concerned buffer zones and feel they need to be expanded along all the current creeks. We need to stop the sewers that feed into the Oshawa, Goodman and other creeks in the area. All sewage and all run off should be captured and treated before it is allowed back into the lakes and streams.

Comments: Yes I believe that trees should be protected within reason. I believe that the city is doing a great job with the urban landscape. Each year for the past 20 plus years, my scouts and I have been planting trees. I think more could be done and I think we should give people the option to contibute to a plant a tree fund to increase the number ad quality of trees that are planted each year. I think we need to be careful when we talk about fees or penalties being paid when a tree must come down, I would be hard pressed to suggest that asenior citizen or low income family would have to pay a fee or fine in addition to the expense of removing a tree that is unsafe.

Comments: I think this is a tough nut to crack. I have traveled throughout Europe and appreciate what a good public transit system can achieve but we in North America love our cars. I think we would need to come up with a viable plan before expanding the network. I don't think this is as simple as build it and they will come. There must be a compeling reason for people to change.

Comments: A simple question that does not have a simple answer. We are dealing with emerging technologies and I think we need to look at the environmental impact of our decision from the birth to the death of the vehicle. If we just look at emissions and don't look at the carbon foot print needed to produce the vehicle or the environmental impact of disposing of it, we may make the wrong decision.

Comments: Where practicle

Comments: We should also look at other ideas that can reduce trafic congestion and accidents. I new Jersey, they have been eliminating left hand turns for a long time. It seem to me to dramatically improve traffic flow, reduce time spent at red lights and reduces traffic accidents. It would be interesting to see what impact this approach could make in our area.

Comments: I am not aware of any data that supports this statement, but I would be interested in looking at any studies on the subject.

Comments: The 407 is a privately owned highway, if the owners feel it is in the interest of their shareholders to expand the highway, they should do that.

Comments: I think the real issue is economic development, in a perfect world, the people who live in Durham could work in Durham and not have to commute dramatically reducing the need for ever widening highways.

Comments: I think we need to look at the needs of the entire area the airport would support in order to make an informed decision. What service would the airport provide? What is the environmental impact be in our area, Malton and Hamilton. I am not in favor of an approach that only looks at the needs or desires of the Durham Region, we are part of a greater community and we need to share that responsibility and burden.

Comments: First let me say that in a perfect world, all manufacturers would be responsible to recycle the products they introduce into the market and their would be no municiple waste. We however do not live in a perfect world and we are forced to deal with the real world problem of municiple waste. I have moral issues with shipping our garbage to some other community to deal with. It is our waste and we need to deal with it. Your question may be moot since the decision on the incinerator I believe will be made September 25th, before the election. I do not believe that Regional Councl will have the authority after that date to reverse the decision. Having said that, I believe the tendering process was significantly flawed, in order to participate in the tender, you had to have two plant operational for at least 10 years with the technology you were proposeing. At that time "Gasification" technology was in it's infancy and the plants in operation were very dirty. The tendering process eliminated all emerging technologies from the bid process. The current plant as proposed, is based on technology that is over 15 years old, it is very expensive and very dirty. I should disclose that in some regards, I have a conflict in this area. I have been working in this area for quite a few years and considered bidding on the Clarington Project. Our technology however was only at the prototype stage at that point so we did not meet the tender requirements. To give you some background, Several yars ago, working with Regional Economic Development I brought together a group of 22 companies in Durham to look at buying the utitlties in those communities that were generating their electricity with diesel fuel. The plan was to building windmills to generate most of the power and use the diesel as backup. At that time I became aware of another significant problem in northern communities, municiple waste. I looked at several technologies to converting municiple waste and sewage to diesel grade fuel but those technologies didn't work and that was when I started to look at "Gasification". So I have been working in this area for a long time. A few weeks ago myself and my partners secured the global marketing rights to a new gasification technology developed in the U.S. The technology is leading edge and recently approved by the EPA. Best of all we have investment funds that are prepared to build plants with their money rather than tax payers money if the municpalities are prepared to make a longterm commitment to provide their municiple waste for a reasonable tipping fee. The plant was developed in 750 ton a day modules so it is easily expandable. A 1500 ton a day plant would take 4 acres of land to operate. I would be happy to provide emission reports. In addition, to our municiple waste we have one of the worst environmental sites in North America here in Durham, the berms behind the steel plant contain millions of tons of "automotive fluff" that leech in to lake Ontario, everyday. It would be interesting to seem what the long term enviromental imact would be of allowing that process to contnue versus building a clean gasfcation plant to convert that waste to energy while cleaning up the site. In summary, I think we need to be responsible for our own waste, we need to deal with it in the most environmentaly responsible manner possible. If it is to land fill it then we should land fill it here, if it is gasification, it should be done here if thereis a better process then I am in favour of it. All of the data I have seen is that "gasifcation" is extremely clean and may be a more environmentaly sound solution to our waste than putting it in landfill. I can provide emission reports if anyone would like to see them.

Comments: One hundred percent is feasible but may not economically viable. Plastics are a huge problem. In a perfect world we would have a small circle of polymers to deal with, these could be sorted manually and then then could be cleaned pelletized and reused. I some cases we could clean and reuse the containers. Practically however there are thousands of polymers and they cannot be mixed if they are going to be reused in the plastic injection moulding process. My company did make a proposal to a major copier manufacturer a number of years ago and developed a process to return their empty toner containers through the mail, sort them, clean them and ship them to the toner plants to be refilled. We were able to produce containers clean enough for reuse at a cost than was lower than the cost of the new containers so it is possible to reuse plastic containers but you need volume. One area we could take action that would help is to legislate a reduction in the number of polymers allowed for use in Ontario or idealy, Canada, there is no reason I am aware of to have so many different polymers.

Comments: Tough question, it could probably be done in 25 years but there are a lot of factors outside our control.

Comments: As I mentioned, I have been in Scouting most of my life. In Scouts, we are used to leaving nothing but foot prints

Comments: To a certain extent, this is a two edged sword. For the most part, the infrastructure to generate energy is a fixed cost. Ontario has a significant energy surplus. As consumers use less energy, the cost of energy increases to sustain the existing infrastructure.

Comments: In principle, I could support this but I would like to see the environmental impact of large use or ground source heat pumps and the carbon foot print of creating the systems. I believe we need to be more environmenatlly responsible but I don't think we should be fabricating or distorting data to create a false sense of urgency. The reality is that the world has been colder and the world has been warmer. If we go back to 600 BCE there was almost no north polar cap and much or South America was under water. Reality is that carbon dioxide levels do not precede global increases in temperature the follow it by 80 years. Current data suggests, that despite the headlines and power point presentations mankind actually contributes less than 1% of all green house gases globaly. The impact mankind has on air quality is more local than global so it is that much more of a reason to deal with it. My concern is that many people are under the misconception that something we can do as a people will change the current warming trend. The data suggests that we are in a natural cycle.

Comments: I believe as Canadians, we feel Social and Health concerns are a little more important than hard costs and taxes. At the same time, we would like to see our tax dollars being spent wisely. I think in all areas of government spending, we should be looking around the world to find the best practices and adopting them.

Comments: I do believe in setting goals and maing plans. A community is no differnt tan a wel run company. We need to lok at our strengths and weaknesses, the oportunites that exist and the threats and we need to develop a strategic plan for the community that covers al aspects of comunity life. I think Oshawa is a great place to live andhas a lot going for it. I also blieve that Oshawa can be better if we all work together and sare common goals.

Comments: I think the process has been bad, in fact I think generally speaking environmental assessments have too little transparency, take too long and are too focused on the local impact of the proposal not the overall impact of doing nothing. Sometimes we have to make a decision to improve our enviromental perfomance now than waiting for the ideal solution some time in the future. Everthing we do we should look at the long term impact of making the decision and the long term impact of doing nothing.

Comments: Yes and lets make sure we get real people speaking language everyone can understand to explain the science and lets deal with the facts. Lets look at the pros and cons. What is the enviromental impact of not building the incinerator?

Comments: I would ask the question, is it possible that we have too much government, in my discussions with the voters most don't know what the various political office are responsible for or who they should phone, Shouldn,t that be under FAQ on the municiple web sites?

I believe in the democratic process, I believe that we are responsible to represent the interests of the majority of those who elect us. To do that we must have a constant stream of information from the voters on what their priorities are. In ancient Greece, when an important vote was to be made, men were sent out with ropes with tar on them to herd the people to the town square where they could here the pros and cons of the arguments and cast a vote. Not too practicle in our day, our democratic process puts the burden on the politician to know what their constituents want. Anyone making conributions to my campaign will have to accept that my decisions will be driven by the voters I represent and that their contribution is to help further the democratic process.

Same as 34

Comments: I recenty participated in a "Speed Debating" actually more of a "speed dating" event that was fantastic, a lot of people got to speak to a lot of candidtates. I believe that we should have all cadidtate meeting throughout the city and frequently before the election. I also feel that public buildings should be made available for those events and that funds should be provided to ensure that the costs are recovered for the host.

Comments: Good question, certainly there is a lot of overkill but it does facitlitate the democratic process. Candidates are required to clear their signs quickly so I am comfotable with the current situation.