Beaver THE OAKVILLE Voted Ontario's Top Newspaper Four Years in a Row - 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Aboutowne Realty Corp., Brokerage Independently owned and operated 905 - 338-9000 Plight of the Home Child ARTSCENE www.homesforsaleontario.com EXPERIENCE·EXPERTISE·INTEGRITY Renate Penkett Sales Representative CELEBRATING 25 YEARS! Between Kerr & Dorval YOUR FRIEND IN THE BUSINESS 175 Wyecroft Rd. Oakville 905.845.6653 www.lockwoodchrysler.com A member of Metroland Media Group Ltd. Vol. 52 No. 84 "USING COMMUNICATION TO BUILD BETTER COMMUNITIES" FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2009 40 Pages $1.00 (plus GST) Mayor seeks health ban on power plants By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Oakville Mayor Rob Burton has opened a new front in the quest to keep a proposed gas-fired power plant away from Oakville neighbourhoods. The mayor used a Tuesday meeting of the Regional Health Committee to introduce a motion that calls on the Region to pressure the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure to terminate any process that sees a gasfired power plant established in the Oakville/Mississauga area known as the Clarkson Airshed. The motion comes as four companies submit their bids to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) to build and operate Mayor Rob Burton such a power plant. If successful in its bid, TransCanada proposes to establish the 900-megawatt Oakville Generating Station on a Ford owned site, located at 1500 Royal Windsor Dr. If any of the other three companies are successful, the plant will be established just across the border in Mississauga. "The motion is modeled on the motion that was passed by Peel Region and is meant to add additional pressure and additional weight to the opinion expressed in Oakville that a power plant is inappropriate in our stressed airshed," said Burton. The motion attacked the proposed power plant on an air quality level, noting the Clarkson Airshed Study Part II, which was carried out by the Ministry of the JON CURRIE / OAKVILLE BEAVER DELIVERING A MESSAGE: This purse with its simple message belongs to Jan Fowler, who watched Wednesday's finance committee meeting in an overflow room after protesters packed the council chambers. War of words heats up Developers pack region meeting to influence development charge debate By Tim Foran METROLAND WEST MEDIA GROUP See Interim page 4 They came from across the GTA in droves -- pulled from construction sites where they had spent the morning working and piled on to seven buses -- and arrived at Halton Region's headquarters at 1 p.m., all wearing signs saying, `Save My Job.' In total, approximately 350 construc- tion workers, contractors and builders, many associated with the large homebuilder Mattamy Corporation, packed Regional Council's chambers Wednesday to protest a regional staff recommendation to add an extra $8,000 per unit charge to residential developers in north Oakville and Milton. Not that all of them knew that though. Many of the workers didn't understand the details of what was on the table, (some thought -- incorrectly -- a land transfer tax was being proposed) except that they'd been told it could slow down an already sluggish building industry resulting in job losses. "Certainly a lot of them don't know why they're here, but I do, and so do their employers," said former Halton regional chair Peter Pomeroy, who now works on behalf of Mattamy Corporation. See Showdown page 3