There is no doubt that…

There is no doubt that Highway 413 is an important project that will help the lives of millions across the province. But that is true to almost any construction, especially one conducted by the government. Every project has its function and is intended to help the lives of the citizens and therefore usually be better built sooner rather than later.

However, just like the highway will help in certain ways millions of Ontarians, the ecosystems on which it will be built are helping in other ways to the same people. In the previous centuries, we have taken and destroyed so much of the planet we live in and during the last decades we grew to realize that we need to take extraordinary steps to protect what remains.

We created laws such as the Environmental Assessment Act to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Laws such as this one were put in place to make sure that no matter what, we take the necessary precautions to safeguard our environment. That act was put in place by politicians that already took into consideration the fact that it will hinder important projects such as Highway 413. Even with that knowledge they understood that on the grand scale those precautions were more important than any specific purpose.

The new proposal is suggesting the MTO will do its own environmental assessment, so they acknowledge that this is an important step. The question is why do they want to bypass the existing law that set specific procedures after consultation with many scientists and professionals and were put in place? The only conclusion is that they are planning to bypass many of these procedures meaning that we won’t actually have the assurance that we minimize our impact while building the highway.

There will always be a reason to expedite construction projects such as this, but we must not repeat the mistakes of the past! The earth is not a bottomless pit and we need to make sure that we minimize the impact that this project has on our environment as much as possible before it moves forward, even if it means a delay in the completion of the project.