As a resident of GTA for…

As a resident of GTA for nearly my whole life, and someone with a BSc and MA degrees in Environmental Science, Biology and Environmental Education, I am very concerned about Bill 23.

We have the climate crisis and food insecurity on the horizon. Already here if you take the global perspective.

The Climate Crisis will exacerbate extreme weather including flooding, ice storms, droughts. That’s an added dimension to future food insecurity as well as more death and destruction.

Ontario has conservation authorities for a reason. That reason being our wise, past leaders learned from the disaster of Hurricane Hazel and created the conservation authorities with the mandate to provide expert oversight on land and water conservation to protect us from natural disasters such as floods. Our Greenbelt was created -intentionally intact- as our insurance policy for buffering our communities from extremes in weather. It would be even more important with the climate crisis. But the Greenbelt would only work if we kept it intact.
Frankly, if it wasn't for the Greenbelt, the forest fires, followed by floods and landslides we saw happen in British Columbia in recent years would have also been our reality.

Also, one of the key recommendations by Justice O'Connor following the Walkerton Inquiry, is to protect our drinking water from source-to-tap. Taking away pristine Greenbelt land and replacing it with rezoned degraded land is not a preventative action. Also, it does not factor in actual watershed and migratory and vulnerable species biodiversity characteristics of the land.

"The Clean Water Act, 2006 is part of the multi-barrier approach to ensure clean, safe and sustainable drinking water for Ontarians, by protecting sources of municipal drinking water such as lakes, rivers and well water. Under this legislation, the Drinking Water Source Protection Program was established by the Government of Ontario. [Before the Ford government] This resulted in the development of science-based assessment reports and local source protection plans by multi-stakeholder source protection committees, supported by Source Protection Authorities." (SPA includes conservation authorities, municipalities and watershed stakeholders.)
[https://conservationontario.ca/conservation-authorities/source-water-pr…]

Sincerely,
Catherine L