Exoneration from the Drive Clean Program's obligations for reasons of Conscience

Ottawa, February 17th 2015.

Premier of Ontario, Service Ontario The Honourable Kathleen O. Wynne
Minister of Transportation, The Honourable Steven Del Duca
Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, The Honourable Glen Murray

SUBJECT: Exoneration from the Drive Clean Program's obligations for reasons of Conscience

Dear Ministers,

I am writing to you jointly because you represent all of the accountable bodies for the Drive Clean program: Service Ontario, the ministry of Transportation and the ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. This letter is to signify my refusal to comply with the Drive Clean program in order to obtain a legal registration for my personal use vehicles, the mandatory Safety Standards Certificate shall be enough. Many reasons led to this decision.

The Drive Clean program requires that an emission test be performed on my car for pollution reduction goals by the government of Ontario. At first it sounds laudable but in reality, it no longer has a significant effect according to an Auditor General's report written back in 2012: "the program has outlived its usefulness". In that light, where can I find the data proving that the Drive Clean program significantly improves air quality like it boasts about? Why should I be required to adhere to such policies if the government does not monitor the actual effectiveness of the measures it imposes on its citizens? Maybe it does monitor something but there is no up-to-date data available or it's hard to access. The Auditor added: "They’re going after the low-lying fruit in order to try to deal with the politics of this issue and not the practicalities of the issue". Almost five years have passed now. What has your government done since to review the Drive Clean program? It seems that the government of Ontario is trying to pin the price tag on small players in the preservation of our environment. Although the program does not prove to be a significantly effective initiative, the government does not take in account the Auditor's advice to dismiss the program or replace it entirely by real incentive measures.

The Drive Clean program is only targeting the most populated areas, and therefore it is a discriminatory factor. Passing a test every second year for only part of the residents of Ontario in the effort to combat global pollution is unrealistic. As an example, if I lived in rural area just west of Ottawa, I would not have to submit my car to any emission testing. How is it logical that a region located west of a city does not have to comply while everybody knows that dominant winds do come from the west? Your program's geographical criteria allows the untested vehicle’s pollutants released into those winds, to be transported over the most populated areas. How cynical is that? I can not consciously agree with such unfounded and discriminatory criteria. In addition, if it were a light-duty commercial farm vehicle, I would be exempt from testing it. Here we can understand that commercial farms while in direct contact with the food chain, can use polluting vehicles without any restriction, and this is acceptable according to your program's criteria. The Auditor's report mentioned that "it eases economic burden on farmers", even though vehicle expenses are deductible from their taxes, it is just a smoke screen in my point of view. To be cohesive with its pollution reduction goal, the Drive Clean program should either be applied to every type of vehicle across Canada or none. The pollution problematic is a national issue not just a provincial one and since British Columbia just terminated their similar emission-test program, it seems like better initiatives can be put in place to really attack the smog issue at its root.

My new car being older than 7 years but not over 25 years old makes it obligatory to have its emissions tested to comply with the Drive Clean program. This means that if I prefer to buy a used car in order to save the environment in my own way by re-using existing cars to hinder car production's pollution, I am penalized because it might emit a little more pollutants than a newer vehicle. Knowing the fact that manufacturing a new car generates a carbon footprint between 6 to 35 tons of CO₂ or if you prefer, the equivalent of what it will consume during its lifespan, this criteria becomes questionable since it does not account for the carbon footprint as part of the equation. We are being told by the government and the media that we should change our habits in order to reduce our individual footprint and on the other side, we are encouraged to get new cars with improved emission-control systems but avoid mentioning the additional carbon footprint being generated. This also implies that people, who can't afford new cars or overpriced hybrid-electric vehicles, have to pay more for their family vehicle’s registration. This is an additional hidden discriminatory fee that affects mostly the poorer portion of the population.

If a new vehicle is sold after only one year, it must have an other emission test performed by the new owner even though emission testing is ordered every two years. How is it that cars have to be tested every two years? Don't your respective ministries question the reasons why parts of emission systems do not have a longer lifespan or reliability? The Drive Clean program transfers the responsibility of a polluting vehicle from the big corporations to consumers. This facilitates the obsolescence of car parts rather than holding the car industry accountable for profiting financially in manufacturing polluting vehicles and emission systems which have created, in the long run, a series of collateral damages to the climate, the environment and the public's health.

Why not reverse the burden and make it mandatory for car manufacturers to produce zero emission vehicles from now on? The government can create new sustainable markets accessible to a majority of Ontarians by putting in place new policies to facilitate the implementation of electric motors across Ontario and make it easy to replace polluting vehicles' gas engines by electrical motors. These different measures can make our dependency on oil obsolete and create a new futuristic economy. Since the federal government just awarded Ontario's car industry a 100 million dollars, maybe it would be a good idea to use a big part of it to implement such measures and this way, make Ontario an example for the rest of the country? At the moment, we seem to have oil driven governments which do not want to let go of an old dirty habit that is unsustainable and an unfriendly environmental orientation. Recently, the United Nations even pointed to Canada's emissions to be amongst the worst in the world next to China and India. To the best of my conscience, I do not believe that the Drive Clean program is the solution for this elephant in the room.

In fact there is not one, but a herd of elephants in the room when we talk about pollution emissions and schemes, climate change, environment, public health and safety. How do these terms relate? Actually they are all being bullied or destroyed by big corporations' ambitions, human activities and greed. It seems that laws are now designed for corporations' interests instead of the citizens' basic right to a safe and clean environment.

There is a big emphasis on your respective ministry's website regarding smog preventing policies, so I researched the word smog. It is described as the conjuncture of the words smoke and fog, and defined as: "smoke or other atmospheric pollutants combined with fog in an unhealthy or irritating mixture".

Smog is known for causing multiple health issues and the World Health Organization even declared pollution a carcinogen. The government of Ontario drafted an adaptation strategy and action plan titled "Climate Ready". In this plan most of the strategy has to do with our adaptation to climate change, it is mentioned: "(...) the government of Ontario is taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also recognizes the need to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of changing weather patterns resulting from heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere.(...)"

To write"unavoidable impacts" and "already in the atmosphere" are two biased statements by themselves mainly because they suppose a natural occurrence of the phenomenon when in fact, it is mostly manly introduced using aircrafts amongst other means that is without counting the residues left by multiple ozone depleting nuclear tests conducted in the upper atmosphere over many years, which are still there but no one dares remembering this part.

Almost every day there are aircrafts passing over my residence and most of them leave pollution trails, light or dark. They stay still, they don't dissipate, they spread and finally smear the sky. Very often the planes pass right in front of the sun, preventing me from seeing clear sunsets for the past few years. To top it off, most airplanes don't even respect the official flying zones. See the annex (below present letter) for pictures of this pollution seemingly shaped as clouds. I saw somebody talking about climate change and explaining how they were actually trying to control the weather by polluting the stratosphere with sulfuric acid. In other words, this "climate expert" advises governments to cool off the climate by spraying pollution containing acid because in the end it is the cheapest way around. What? First of all, basic science shows that what goes up must come down. Following this simple principle, it means that the earth is now littered with nano size particles of chemicals coming from those weather alteration projects. I investigated about these trails and they are part of climate geoengineering programs which use different processes such as stratospheric aerosols, solar radiation management, cloud seeding, hail suppression, hurricane dissipation, some of the ways to defy natural weather using chemicals and radio signals, a godlike power. The electromagnetic signals by themselves disturb the natural earth's balance frequency and therefore humans' equilibrium which by itself is electro-magnetic pollution, but that is another subject.

Many government papers do mention these projects. The same people advising lawmakers are the ones who own the companies which capture and store the CO₂ gases. On one hand your government obliges me to have my cars pass emission tests in order to reduce pollution and on the other hand, the Ontario government sponsors climate engineering schools and projects that specifically spray more pollution. In resume, governments are giving the authorization to pollute, then invest in capturing the pollution they help put up in the first place and finally charge the ordinary citizens through the Drive Clean program. Why is this allowed? Where is the government's accountability? It looks quite convenient for the oil industry to be able to get rid of the sulfuric residue to be put up in the atmosphere, block the sun rays and reduce the solar systems efficiency, in a period where sun powered energy is proving worldwide to be more efficient and reliable than the unsustainable fossil and nuclear energies. Germany proved it last year and gave energy away.

Recently Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Murray announced a carbon pricing plan, coming up in the spring, to fight climate change. This in my opinion, is an unsustainable, nonscientifically defendable in addition to be a poor environmental choice with a lack of vision, no offence. Not only it does not encourage better practices by the polluting industries, it only serves a corporate image to lure the public with the impression that big polluters are paying their share too in the combat against global warming when in reality, carbon pricing is just an additional money-grab scheme designed to introduce new trading avenues with weather derivatives and the forecasting of the man-made weather they invested in. Polluting industries can keep on doing business as usual without any extra cost or effort to factually reduce CO₂ emissions and prevent further warming of the planet. In other words, it is a free ride on our grandkids or an ignominy towards younger generations. The actual difference between the big polluting industries and the ordinary citizen in this CO₂ taxing scheme is that family vehicles are not allowed any emission while the real big polluting corporations can buy the right to pollute adding to the stock market are making money trading those CO₂gases.

Even if these projects are experimental, secret, military, governmental or civil, no reason is good enough to try to play with nature because for every action there is a reaction somewhere else in the world. This way of dealing with the matter is a direct affront to the climate, a great danger to the environment and all living creatures. Mother Nature would be much calmer without any man intervention and governments would save money just choosing this simple option. The worst part of these insane climate engineering projects is that no individual, nor corporation, nor governmental body is accountable for experimenting with the climate on a large scale without public acknowledgement, omitting the due public health effect assessments. What about moral and ethics? It is a direct violation with your own government's Environmental Protection Act which it bases their criteria upon to impose the Ontarian consumers the Drive Clean program to obtain legal vehicle registration. I consciously can not agree with emission testing on my cars while such attempts on human rights, health and the environment are permitted by the same instances ordering the Drive Clean program, it does not make sense.

A tangible political will would implement real policies where industries are obliged to have zero emission otherwise they can not conduct business in Ontario. If corporations can generate billions of dollars in profits then they can easily invest in systems to effectively cut their own polluting emissions to zero if not, leave the ground for new innovative and clean energy sources. When there is a will, there is a way and here, all we need is the political courage to change direction in the carbon pricing and introduce incentive regulations at the root of the problem: big polluting industries and climate geoengineering. This is exactly the moment when emissions will dramatically drop and when the Drive Clean program can make some sense because for now, the government sponsors the biggest polluters and charges the little ones.

Recent studies showed that most smog causing emissions have declined since the program started but underlined that emissions were no longer amongst the major domestic contributors to smog in Ontario. Already back in 2010, the Auditor's report stated that more than half of the pollutants present in Ontario came from the central United States. What did your respective ministries do upon this hard fact? Why are such assaults on our health and environment being tolerated by your government? How come this fact does not make the news headlines and does not occupy the hot topic list in the government's agenda? What actions have been taken since 2010 to prevent the United States from further polluting the atmosphere in Ontario? There have been international treaties and agreements signed by both Canada and the United States to prevent tampering with the weather: the Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD) and the Agreement between the government of Canada and the government of the United States of America on Air Quality between the government of Canada and the government of the United States of America on Air Quality. With those agreements, there is supposed to be monitoring of the chemicals crossing our mutual borders and accountability for them. Who exactly surveils, oversees and enforces those agreements?

In my conscience, I can not accept to pay for car emission testing considering your respective ministries are not preventing or sanctioning aircraft pollution nor industries' excessively huge emissions, especially by the oil sands' and the United States' activities. How about the nanoparticles used by climate geoengineering and those rejected by manufacturing companies, how are these smog causing particles measured, monitored and regulated by your government? Do you have the necessary equipment to even test nano size particles?

Finally, last point to my objection is this: the Drive Clean program generated 12 million dollars in profit back in 2010 and 19 million in 2013. At this rate, the government will have exceeded the program's projected revenue of 50 million dollars far sooner than 2018 as expected, if it's not the case already. This legal money-grab is a yet an other user fee disguised as a tax according to a 1998 Supreme Court of Canada's decision, it could even be considered an unlawful tax and therefore repayable. Since then, the government only lowered the maximum chargeable price for an emission test to $30. just five dollars less than previously charged while the price of $17,⁵⁰ for retesting failed tests stayed unchanged. If the program made a profit of 19 millions in 2013, it means that Ontarians were overcharged. This contravenes with the government's role in revenue neutrality which means that a user fee should not exceed the cost to the government of providing the service. Why should I accept to pay for emission tests every two year when it is clear that the government is behaving like a private enterprise profiting illegally from its own policies? This is an additional reason for my refusal to have my cars' emissions tested in order to obtain legal registration.

To conclude, I consciously can not agree with the basis of this mandatory emission test since it does not hold the road. Until the Drive Clean program is revisited in its targeted vehicles and measures, until it shows measurable air improvement in a direct effect from the Drive Clean program itself, until climate geoengineering is addressed and made public and until the biggest polluters are obliged to limit their emissions to zero, I refuse any emission test to be performed on my vehicles and therefore consider my vehicles exonerated from the Drive Clean program requirement in order to obtain legal personal-use vehicle registrations for the province of Ontario.

Your government should establish new ways of tackling climate change through new sustainable, futuristic, innovative and visionary legislation and projects, and terminate this obsolete Drive Clean program. Only then will you truly declare:

«Our government will build Ontario up. Ontario will be the best place to live, from childhood to retirement.»

Thank you for taking the time to read and have a magnificient day.

Chantal Dupuis
Ottawa, On