-----Original Message-----
From: Catherine Bayne [mailto:cbayne@bayniche-conservancy.ca]
Sent: December 29, 2011 4:29 PM
To: BoardSec; gpotts@northlandpower.ca; ajacko@uccm.ca; jsidlofsky@blg.com
Subject: OEB Oral Hearing Request EB-2011-0394

Given the lack of access to Internet in Northern Ontario to facilitate written submissions and the strong oral traditions of First Nations and Metis culture as well as the lack of cost/benefit analysis for the renewable energy policy so unambiguously elucidated by the Auditor General of Ontario we feel that there are serious risks to the economic well-being of Manitoulin Island and the region as a whole which need to be thoroughly and publicly discussed.

We ask that there be oral hearings on Manitoulin Island so that the issues of importance to landowners and tourist operators and First Nations be heard in the context of the Northern paradigm. The power to be supplied via the proposed transmission corridor is not needed at present , nor even for the reasonably foreseeable future as conservation programs and economic constraints decrease demand, so the potential for economic losses to the community should be thoroughly weighed against the value of unreliable, non-dispatchable, costly and therefore very low value generation added to an increasingly unstable grid.

Catherine Bayne
BayNiche Conservancy
MRH ON P0S1H0
www.bayniche-conservancy.ca
Member: www.savetheeaglesinternational.org
Member: www.lsarc.ca
Member: www.greatlakeswindtruth.org