Telus Towers response: Quixotic folly

In my 21 January 2022 TIDELINES comments on this topic, I concluded that we had a choice for Cortes:

'There’s no obvious reason why this process should not work reasonably, acceptably well for our population, as it apparently has already for the vast majority of the Canadian population, if we approach it with some flexibility and wisdom.
Alternatively, our Don and Dona Quixote’s can expend a lot of verbiage tilting at … transmission towers, and perhaps bog the process down awhile, without really accomplishing much, other than depriving ourselves of the ability to contact emergency services and the ability to have easy mobile contact with family and friends, when outside or away from our homes.'

So far, our Don's and Dona's appear to have chosen the Quixotic approach.

How did we get here?

In my 8 June 2021 comments on this topic, a graphic was included which included the following text, from ISED:

'Once a company has a plan, it must notify local residents of the upcoming consultation following ISED’s or the municipality’s consultation process.'

This is simple English. There are 2 possibilities for the consultation process for siting of Telecommunication Towers: The ISED provided default consultation process, or a Tower Siting consultation process established by the Land Use Authority (in our case, the SRD).

ISED encourages Land Use Authorities to create their own Tower Siting protocol, and provides guidance for their creation, and may provide assistance if requested. The SRD has not created an appropriate tower Siting protocol.

Telecommunications Companies do not provide or choose Tower Siting consultation processes. When they have plan proposal, then they work with the Tower Siting protocol established by the Land Use Authaority, or when the Land Use Authority has no appropriate Tower Siting protocol, then they use the ISED default protocol, as required by regulation.

That's it. So if Cortes Islanders would like to have a meaningful and informed consultation process, beyond that provided by the ISED default process, then they should request that our regional director go to the SRD board with a proposal to create a Tower Siting process compliant with CPC-2-0-03 — Radiocommunication and Broadcasting Antenna Systems, for future proposals. That would be an SRD responsibility, as our Land Use Authority. Such a process would cover their entire area of responsibility, so it would have to be appropriate for their 40,000+ constituents. There is no avenue for a process which is strictly for Cortes Island.

On March 11th, 2022, our Regional Director submitted a report to the SRD board encompassing much of the communication covering the original TELUS request for constructing cell towers on Cortes Island.

In that, the comment "...In May, Telus undertook its standard ISED public process...". This statement implies that Telus has some owership of that process, which is incorrect. The standard ISED public process is an ISED creation, and is the process required by them to be used when the Land Use Authority lacks their own defined process.

The report includes the SRD resolution of May, 2021:

"On May 26th the SRD Board passed the following resolution:

THAT the Chair write a letter to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) to bring to their attention that TELUS has not engaged the Cortes Island and Quadra Island community in any meaningful manner regarding the proposed cell towers; and THAT the SRD opposes any permission granted by ISED to construct cellular towers on Cortes Island until the community has been properly consulted and supports the construction of the proposed cell towers."

In this, the SRD appears to be blaming Telus for using the protocol required when the Land Use Authority has no Telus Siting process defined. The past choice to not create a Tower Siting process was an SRD responsibility and choice, not a Telus choice.

The report included the following statement from the Cortes Regional Director:

"On May 30, I wrote to my constituents in an article titled ‘Proposed Cortes Telus Telecommunications Towers’ asking them to ‘Stand with me to demand meaningful and informed public consultation.”

A petition was created with the following demand, and sent to Telus:

"We call for a meaningful public consultation for any future proposed tower, as have already been requested by the Cortes regional director Noba Anderson in her letter to TELUS from July 6, 2021, when the community rejected a similiar proposal in the same neighourhood."

As above, the way for the SRD to get a more tailored process for their constituents is to create a proper protocol. Demanding different consultation processes from Telecommunications Companies doesn't make a lot of sense.

The original TELUS proposal process appears to have been hijacked, based largely on the bogus claim that TELUS was blameworthy in 'choosing' the ISED default process for tower approval, when in fact that responsibility lies with the SRD.

There is a current proposal for a new Telecommunications Tower on southern Cortes Island, on Tla’amin territory.

Hijacking that proposal would be disrespectful, unethical, and disgraceful.

Rob Chapman
Squirrel Cove