No consent

This is not how to engage with a community.” Christina Zeidler likely hadn’t intended to go to the microphone at the Wellington Community Centre last Wednesday. But when she did, her words echoed through the room and into the broader community. They echo still.

Ryan Guetter is a pro. He is smart and charming, and he knows what he is doing. Mostly, he knows how to manage a few hundred anxious residents. It is what he is paid to do. Residents are anxious because Guetter’s client, Kaitlin Corporation, has the singular means and power to transform this village—this community—forever.

Kaitlin’s plans—the ones they showed at this meeting—consist of maps with undefined grids of housing blocks across the fields stretching from the Millennium Trail to the landfill site, from Consecon Street to beyond Belleville Road. Several hundred acres.

The municipality is complicit in this radical reformation. It uses the same methods, the same tools—pretending to listen, pretending to engage, pretending to care. Meanwhile, the machinery plows ahead, and the apparatus continues to unfold as though hundreds of folks had not uttered a word.

Most people want to be helpful. Perhaps with some tweaks and changes, the intolerable may become tolerable. Or, perhaps the inevitable may become a bit more bearable. So they queue up. They implore the developer to respect the tree canopy in Wellington. They urge them to be mindful of the environment and suggest net zero energy methods. Others ask: Who will come to a community without doctors or transit? And, if they don’t decide to come, who will pay for the $100 million waterworks expansion being built for them?

This is the process, so folks decide to use it. They have nothing else. There is no other means to alter the trajectory of the radical transformation.

After each resident said their piece, Guetter effusively thanked the commenter or questioner. There were few answers, mostly the earnest assurance that “We are listening.”

“We are going to be here as long it takes to hear your feedback,” Guetter assured the queue of residents.

Zeidler approached the microphone late in the session. Her voice calm and controlled.

“The scale is overwhelming,” she told the developer. “It represents a crisis of character for a village this size.”

“This process asks us for comments—but then these comments are treated as consent. It is important for everyone to understand what is going on here.”

In a few precise words, Zeidler laid bare the hard-nosed, cynical game the developer’s consultant was playing.

“It is so insulting for you to tell us you are listening,” said Zeidler. “And then, if you don’t like what the community or its elected council wants, you will appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal. That is a threat.”

This municipality and this developer have made big plans for this village. They’ve made agreements. And in fairness, I expect the municipality is doing so in good faith. But neither Shire Hall nor the developer know this village—nor do they appear interested in learning.

Wellington residents understand all too well that if these plans go wrong—or, more precisely, if they don’t go perfectly—it will be really bad for Wellington and waterworks users generally.

Yet Shire Hall tells them their concerns are myths. Their worries are uninformed. Their fears are groundless. Instead of proper consultation, Shire Hall insists they promenade around a room adorned with arcane engineering drawings. And then go home. Leave it to the experts.

Residents have been left out of the decision-making. On purpose. By design. They have been kept on the sidelines and in the dark. They see the scale of the transformation of their village into a GTA suburb, and they want it to slow down. They see it as overwhelming to their sense of place.

So, let us be clear: 500 folks at a waterworks infrastructure meeting is not consent. Several hundred more people a week later looking at blank grids of streets where corn grows today is not consent.

Neither Shire Hall nor Kaitlin have this community’s consent.

Both must figure out how to engage properly with this community.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca