ROGERS CELL TOWER APPLICATION DENIED
A 20-month campaign by concerned residents to stop Rogers Communications from erecting a constantly radiating, 210 to 250-foot, seven-antenna cell tower in the centre of Hornby Island has ended with the Local Trust Committee delivering an emphatic thumbs down to the monster telco from Toronto.
The disturbingly delayed decision came after a legal opinion by barrister & solicitor, Carla Conkin — an Islands Trust procedural expert retained by the Concerned Residents of Hornby Island (CRHI) — found that an Islands Trust planner had improperly blocked trustee Alex Allen’s original call for nonconcurrence in September 2023.
Allen was vindicated 10 months later, when he notified this reporter on July 11:
We just passed this at an RWM : “That the Hornby
Island Local Trust Committee does not concur with
the proposed location for the Rogers Communication
Inc. tower on Provincial Crown land on the west side
of Central Road across from the fire hall, Hornby
Island.”
Finally, it’s over.
Or is it?
Can this decision by Hornby’s LTC be overturned by federal regulators? Or the province, whose ruling is expected within weeks?
Technically yes.
In practice, no.
ISED (formerly Industry Canada) did not overrule the Hornby LTC’s vote against the Telus tower. To do so now would contravene the industry’s own guidelines, which defer to local government decisions, while risking a firestorm of adverse publicity.
On the provincial level, affordable housing remains a top priority. Which complicates the situation for Rogers, because, after two years of bureaucratic box-checking, the Hornby Island Economic Enhancement Committee has formally applied for permission to build critically needed community housing on this same elevated parcel of Crown Land.
It’s been a long and unfair fight. As the “Preserve and Protect” smokescreen begins to clear, what lessons can be learned from this latest Islands Trust debacle?
“We got to this place because our LTC refused to uphold our community plan,” charges Helen Grond. “The application should never have been considered in the first place because it directly contravenes our OCP.”
Is she right?
Although Rogers rep Brain Gregg publicly boasted that his client’s tower would also serve “boaters” and nearby islands, Section 5.5.4 of Hornby’s Official Community Plan stipulates: “All public service and utility installations on the Island should be for servicing Hornby Island only.”
Trust corporate planners “always deferred to Rogers, never to the community,” Grond continues. “They put us thorough hell. We spent thousands of dollars to fight this. The ordeal we were put through trying to protect our island is completely unacceptable on all levels.”
This longtime Hornby resident wants to “remind” Trust officials that not only are cell towers inappropriate for Hornby Island, “it’s enough that cell towers are disallowed in our community plan.”
Speaking for many, she warns Trust officials: “Don’t think for an instant that you can come at this again.”
William Thomas
