Dear Friends and Neighbours:

An exchange of letters between Telus and the District of Metchosin happened 
this week (Oct 4-8).  The exchange allowed the two sides to clarify their
positions.  Telus's position is that it will not recognize the antenna
siting by-law passed by the Metchosin Council because the by-law is
at variance with Industry Canada rules for such by-laws. The company
says that it will continue with the default public consultation procedure
under the CPC-02-0-03 guidelines.  In its reply the District of Metchosin
maintains that its land use policy on tower siting does not conflict with
federal jurisdiction and that it expects Telus to adhere to the District's
antenna location policy.

The letters exchanged between Telus and the District of Metchosin
also contain arguments about the history of the current impasse.
Telus's rambling letter lays out the steps of its discussions with the
District and how these steps constitute a consultation.  The picture
painted by Telus is a strange one.  It is certainly not a picture of the
interactions between the two parties that anyone I know holds. In
some ways the Telus document reminds me a of a stalker letter--one
of those out-of-the-blue letters that women sometimes receive from
strange men, missives interpreting several of their innocent actions
and comments as coded messages of an ongoing relationship.
At one or two points in its letter Telus gets the facts wrong, as
the District points out in its reply, but most of the time Telus
takes events that really happened and slants them to fit a fictional
story of a good faith consultation with the District that led the
company to the current site for their proposed tower.

For what it is worth, my own perspective is that a real consultation
has not occurred.  A real consultation would have been Telus coming
to the the District and saying "We are going to build a radiocommunications
tower in the Metchosin area.  We have the money and the authority of
the Federal government to do this.  Here are our requirements for such a site.
What are your priorities, as the land use authority, for the siting of the tower?"
Telus would have listed such things as RF coverage, site access and amenities,
etc.  Metchosin would have specified setbacks, distances from neighbours,
consistency with the rural landscape, etc.  I can't imagine in a sparsely inhabited
area such as Metchosin that a dozen sites could not have been found that
would satisfy both parties. The currently proposed site is, unfortunately, not
one of them.

We can only hope that the exchanges between Telus and the District of
Metchosin up to this point, however at odds the two parties seem to be in
these letters, are leading up to this kind of real consultation and
that the next site chosen will be satisfactory to both parties.

                                           Kem Luther