Hello, I am writing today to…

Hello,

I am writing today to voice my deep concern and opposition to Bill 23, the ‘More Homes Built Faster’ Act, and greenbelt revocation.

I have primarily voted for Conservative governments in my life, including Doug Ford. I say this solely in the hopes that if a real human reads this, you won’t conveniently dismiss this letter as simply another ‘left-wing environmentalist who opposes any and all development’. I’ve done my best to review the 78 page Act available here in full.

My concerns are numerous, and at a high level may be summarized as; I believe the Act strips Conservation Authorities of their ability and responsibility to the public to protect wild places and wetlands for the betterment of all; the Act is not built with a degree of conservation or wildlife preservation ethic; the Act aims to further centralize landscape altering powers within the Provincial government, including powers that are decentralized for the betterment of the landscape and our people; the Act aims to further increase the power and profits of already blossoming development companies in Ontario; the Act is not designed with the sole intention of benefitting Ontarians who wish to one day own a home.

More specific concerns include:
• Reducing regulatory responsibility and authority of our 36 conservation authorities
• Reducing public’s ability to appeal projects on our land, limiting to ‘key participants’
• Disregard for species-at-risk
• Disregard for conservation of land as a priority – limiting conservation authorities’ ability to object to a property (aka financially quantifiable) viewpoint
• Allowing for sale of Conservation Lands for development, without government approval or consultation
• Reducing protections for wetlands
• Allowing woodland and wetland destruction to be offset by simply paying fees
• Reducing flood protection for places that I care deeply about and have suffered significant flooding in recent years, such as Minden ON
• Encouraging sprawl over densification
• Reductions in parkland percentage requirements
• Broadening of parkland/greenspace definitions
• Pit and quarry exceptions
• Ability to breakup continuous nature of Greenbelt, creating wildlife habitat/migration corridor fragmentation
• Removal of Green Standard in Toronto
• The Bill being timed to pass following municipal elections, before councils are sworn in

Theodore Roosevelt, a crucial figure in the history of wildlife and wilderness preservation in North America, along with hunters who have funded through tags, stamps and excise taxes much of the wild places we enjoy today – spoke of the “generations in the wombs of time”. Each generation has a responsibility to the future. Yes we have a housing problem in this province today, I grappled with it for the first time myself this year. But I’d ask you to consider in this Bill – are you implementing a short-term fix today, by stealing from those future generations? Will your grandchildren, and their grandchildren, still have wild places to enjoy? Will they have wetlands, or only concrete and manicured, non-wildlife or flood benefitting lawns? Will they ever get to enjoy the beauty of an eagle in flight? A foal following its mother? A warbler singing in the pre-darn darkness?

In the 1800s, excessive market hunting nearly eradicated many wildlife and game populations in this continent. Through bag limits, sound wildlife biology, a conservation ethic and more, we stopped that. Excessive market hunting is no longer our fight – habitat is. Habitat eradication and landscape management will be the factors that determine whether wilderness and wildlife persists on this continent, and in this province.

I’ll leave you with some song lyrics from Paradise by John Prine, where a father speaks to his son about the destruction of their favourite river. “Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel, and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land. Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken, then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.”

Respectfully,