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In 2011, and ever since, the Ontario government has insisted it was worried that planting windmills in the beds of the Great Lakes would stir up old pollution from the bottom. The environment minister at the time, John Wilkinson — who’s now out of politics — testified at length that he was spooked by the deaths from dirty water at Walkerton and wouldn’t stand for any risk to either Canadian or American drinking water.

The energy minister then, Brad Duguid — who’s now Ontario’s economic development minister — said publicly when the government imposed the moratorium almost six years ago that politics had nothing to do with the decision. The Liberals were heading for an election and people with lakefront property didn’t like the prospect of wind farms in their expensive views. But the decision was strictly about a lack of scientific knowledge, Duguid said.

Wilkinson’s drinking-water worries were genuine, the panel ruled. “At the same time, however, the evidence before the tribunal suggests that the decision to impose the moratorium was not only driven by the lack of science,” its ruling says. “The impact of offshore wind on electricity costs in Ontario, as well as the upcoming provincial elections in November 2011, also appear to have influenced the decision, and the latter in particular in light of the public opposition to offshore wind that had emerged during the relevant period in many parts of rural Ontario.”

The panel was “unable to find, on the basis of the evidence before it, that these concerns were the predominant reason for the moratorium,” but let’s not pretend they didn’t matter at all. The bigger political challenge was with other projects, but Windstream got caught up with the rest of them.