The federal government is rejecting calls from some residents in southern Ontario to find other spots to set up its planned Arctic over-the-horizon radar installations.
Parliament has received a flurry of petitions criticizing National Defence for buying up plots of quality farmland near Barrie, Ont., for the new radar sites, and calling on Ottawa to preserve the land.
The federal government bought land in Clearview Township for a receiver site, and acreage for a transmitter site in Kawartha Lakes, upsetting local residents.
A government response tabled in Parliament says the project has complex and “inflexible” requirements for things like latitude and the distance between installations, and it has been unable to find other sites that could serve….