I am submitting these…

I am submitting these comments as I am extremely dismayed with every aspect of environmental disruption that has been and is being proposed and moved forward by your government.

The proposed Bill 23 is only the most recent attack on the Ontario environment from the Doug Ford government but its intent is to drive Ontario's urban planning back 50 or 60 years into the past, to a time when it was thought appropriate to promote urban sprawl and dependence on the automobile. Like most people, I do recognize that Ontario needs to build more houses. But Ontario needs to build affordable houses in places where people can afford to live and get to their workplace on reliable public transit and not on congested roads in individual automobiles. There is plenty of land within the city boundaries of our urban areas to accommodate Ontario’s planned growth through wise policies which would increase the density of urban development and therefore reduce the impacts on our farm lands and natural features. Responsible development would promote rapid and reliable urban transit with less need for automotive infrastructure and would make substantial inroads into our outsized carbon emissions.

Bill 23 would remove many of the environmental reviews and controls which are necessary to achieve development with minimal environmental impact. Conservation authorities will have their powers reduced by Bill 23 – they are the approval bodies who know the most about the natural environment of those areas and are therefore most able to comment knowledgeably on mitigation and management of new urban development. Their role is especially vital given the past 20 or 30 years which have seen substantial reductions in both the resources and the ability of the provincial ministries, such as the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, to provide comment.

Your Bill 23 will actually increase municipal taxes by removing or reducing the development fees that fund the necessary roads, sewage treatment infrastructure and parks that must accompany new development. Who will pay for these if they are not funded by development charges? They must be built and so municipalities will have to pay for them out of tax revenues. There is no assurance that reduction of development charges will reduce the cost of a home and no assurance that the funds will not simply be diverted into profit by the developers. You are proposing to allow major developments within Ontario’s Greenbelt - all of which needs to be serviced. You propose a $10 billion Highway 413 to serve developer’s interests, a travesty which will open up areas of important agricultural and natural space to development. Such development would be better placed within existing urban boundaries where increased density could tie into existing sewage infrastructure, existing schools and roads and promote cost effective rapid transit, all of which will do far more for creating affordable homes than the urban sprawl that your party supports.

Most recently, your government has proposed land swaps, in which developers can develop on Greenbelt lands in exchange for acreage elsewhere, outside of the Greenbelt .Greenbelt lands were identified for specific reasons and to protect specific natural and agricultural attributes-there is no assurance that these land swaps will protect those attributes and will achieve nothing if high-value natural areas are developed and low-value areas swapped in exchange. Natural assets exist where they exist for a good reason. Encouraging development in areas which shouldn't be developed is poor planning.

To hide such poor planning and environmental disruption in the guise of a housing crisis is dishonest. There are many analyses showing how Ontario can accommodate its growing population within existing urban boundaries with no need to chew up the Greenbelt – the Greenbelt that belongs to all of the citizens of Ontario. To introduce Bill 23 at a time when the election cycle has left municipalities between previous and newly elected governments impairs their ability to comment on your changes and is an affront to democratic governance.

The website for the Ontario MNRF states that the this ministry is “Protecting Ontario’s biodiversity while promoting economic opportunities in the resource sector and supporting outdoor recreation opportunities”

Nothing in Bill 23 supports that mandate and much of it will impair our biodiversity and our recreational opportunities, will promote economic opportunities favouring the development sector only and decrease the affordability and livability of new homes.

$10 billion of our taxpayers money to build an unnecessary highway across sensitive lands,
further erosion of the ability of conservation authorities to manage development so that it is done responsibly in areas of minimal impact, thus “protecting Ontario’s biodiversity”,

land swaps of demonstrated Greenbelt areas for areas in which no equivalency has yet been demonstrated, policies which do not support Ontario's future growth within existing urban boundaries where it can be more cost effectively serviced, where people can live closer to their places of employment and where density is high enough to support rapid and reliable public transit. Such planning policies will make homes more affordable and are necessary if we are to make any kind of an impact against our ever-warming climate.

The Ford government continues to demonstrate and promote its wanton disregard for the future of Ontario by cancelling alternative energy projects, promoting increased fossil fuel usage, reducing the demonstrated important role of Conservation Authorities and now, promoting the worst forms of new development in the least suitable areas, to be served by a costly new highway that takes us further from the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.