I'll begin with two quotes…

I'll begin with two quotes from "All the Ontario environmental protections Doug Ford wants to overhaul to build more house"s by Fatima Syed and Emma McIntosh in The Narwhal:

"Chief Kelly LaRocca of Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation — northeast of the Greater Toronto Area — told The Narwhal she’s “pretty upset” that the government pushed ahead despite knowing First Nations would object. Her nation has pushed to protect waterways in its territory from development.

“I’m deeply concerned about the fact that we are being willfully ignored,” LaRocca said."

"This change would reduce the number of people that can participate in Ontario’s planning process — cutting off ... many with legitimate social and environmental concerns."

In its current form, Bill 23 is an unconscionable attack on democratic governance and literally, life on this planet. If this Bill is passed, resistance will be swift, persistent, and victorious. If the province continues to erode local democracies, perhaps local democracies ought to replace the province all together.

Green building standards are vital to making our cities and towns sustainable and resilient in climate collapse.

The Green Belt should only be expanded. As a young person in their twenties, I've seen first-hand how my life materially changes with climate change - more unpredictable extreme weather events, more ticks with vector-borne diseases, horrible hot days and flooding. This doesn't even mention the global majority of BIPOC folks in both Canada and so-called developing countries, who are on the front lines of climate change to whom the rich people of Ontario must make climate reparations.

"Offsetting" can never replace what is destroyed.

Finally, this does absolutely nothing to address the housing crisis and applies vile disaster capitalist logics to the problem destroying people's lives in Ontario.

To fix housing, buy some and give it away to be managed by housing cooperatives, municipalities, and tenants' unions. Build dense, mixed-use neighborhoods.