Regular listeners to the Raceline Radio show on Sportsnet 590 The Fan know we have put Canadian Motor Speedway as the lead item in the Race Wrap portion of the show, the news, over the last six years. That’s not an easy thing to do — get a story to sustain its importance for half a dozen years.
But in this case, the development of Canada’s most important and history-changing motorsport complex was important enough to reserve the top spot for the story.
No other radio show in Canada had access to the principals. We were proud to be able to boast that privilege.
While I am of course elated after waiting so long that late last week the Ontario Municipal Board granted final approval to proceed with the construction of this $400-million speed-plant in the Town of Fort Erie, I still harbour a good deal of bitterness toward the system used in this province to police development and growth.
While you certainly need a system of checks and balances to control the construction of large structures in Ontario, the system currently being used by the Ontario Municipal Board is nothing but an over-bloated, red-tape entangled wasteland of bureaucracy that scares investors away by wasting years of valuable time and incredible amounts of money.
And I would like to let the air out of the tires of the self-centered, self-servicing, so-called special interest groups who abuse the system simply because they know they can create a stink to make themselves look much more important than they actually are.
For a small fee of less than $200, anyone in Ontario can file an appeal against anything being proposed for construction or development, and you don’t have to even live in the area where it’s happening.
Once the appeal is filed, the OMB system takes over with a system that is so incredibly slow and ponderous, you can become constipated just thinking about it.
There was only one real opponent of Canadian Motor Speedway over this six-year torture test, and that was PALS, or Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society.
The concept here is too cute to start with, as the land CMS is to be built on along the Queen Elizabeth Highway in Fort Erie hasn’t sustained anything agricultural for decades.
Plus the town changed the zoning so the land shouldn’t even fall under PALS’ self- proclaimed jurisdiction.
CMS repeatedly invited PALS to information meetings to address their concerns about environmental impact, noise, traffic, etc. But of course those invitations were turned down.
Better to create a stink and try and stop a $400-million investment generating millions in revenue and jobs in a town that so badly needs it.
In the meantime, CMS investors were forced to spend millions in environmental impact and noise mitigation studies to back their site plan, because the OMB had to be convinced CMS was good planning.
It’s the system, the process. The hoops you have to jump through to get something built in Ontario.
My all-time favourite money waste? A $10,000 study on the Ontario Milk Snake, because somebody from PALS had determined the track might encroach on the reptiles’ happy home.
CMS investors were also paying thousands of dollars to several farmers in land-holding fees, waiting for the blessed OMB to render their decision, so those purchases could be finalized.
I will not go into the blow-by-blow of PALS’ stand against CMS when it came to the actual OMB hearings, other than to say it was plainly obvious, at least in my opinion, that PALS didn’t have a case from the start, and its opposition to the speedway was based solely on opinion without the substantial evidence to back the claim that the construction of Canadian Motor Speedway was bad planning and was going to mean the end of life on earth as we know it.
The OMB evidently agreed, and last year granted approval.
But hold the celebrating, because the process allows one final window of appeal, and of course because they can, PALS jumped at it, claiming the OMB had committed an error in law when they disqualified one of its witnesses.
So in March, there was one more appeal hearing, where PALS shocked everyone with the revelation that the OMB likely hadn’t made an error in law, the reason the final appeal hearing was called in the first place!
This made it perfectly clear PALS’ only tangible tactic was to stall and delay the approval process to the point where CMS investors would throw up their hands in frustration and run.
The OMB went silent for months after the final appeal hearing, par for the course.
Then, after some stern warnings they were not going to wait forever for a decision, and some pressure and letter writing from the Town of Fort Erie, on Thursday the OMB finally granted final approval.
Canadian Motor Speedway developers did not run.
They had invested too much time and too much money, and bottom line, they were not going to let PALS win.
So at the end of this sad and frustrating tale of woe, the news is good.
Canadian Motor Speedway can proceed, with an oval and road course complex that will be NASCAR and IndyCar compliant, ushering in a new era in Canadian Motorsport.
It’s just too darn bad some stubborn, narrow-minded people, incubated by a woefully inefficient government board, can put people who want to invest $400 million in the province through a bureaucratic meat grinder!
Canadian Motor Speedway should have been built and up and running years ago. The fact it took six years and millions of dollars is an utter disgrace.
See you on CMS opening day, 2015.