On its website, Tiny Township council boasts that the proposed new administration building will be “green” and “net zero.”
The facts tell another story. To make way for this project, they clear-cut five acres of mature forest. That forest wasn’t empty land. It was one of the best carbon assets the township had. By cutting it down, council released thousands of tonnes of stored carbon, erased its ability to absorb more every year, and destroyed habitat that cannot be replaced in our lifetimes.
Council’s “net-zero” math simply doesn’t work. A forest of that size holds well over a thousand tonnes of CO₂. By comparison, a single net-zero house offsets only a few tonnes per year. Dozens of homes running for decades wouldn’t even cover the damage caused by this one clear-cut, let alone the massive carbon footprint of constructing the new facility itself. Calling this project environmentally responsible is an insult to both science and common sense.
For nearly 75 years I have called this “Tiny” peninsula home. I care deeply about this community. That is why it is so disheartening to watch our parks decline, our community centres deteriorate, and our roads crumble, while council pours 50+ millions into what many residents already call an “ego palace.”
This project is not only environmentally reckless, it is fiscally reckless. It ignores our rural character, drains public resources, and saddles future generations with debt.
Tiny deserves better. Council must consult its citizens and focus on what matters: protecting the environment we already have and investing in the services people actually use, not chasing monuments to political vanity.
Paul D. Bell, Ph.D., Forest Entomologist, Tiny
