Limiting the site-specific…

Limiting the site-specific conditions a conservation authority may attach to a permit to matters dealing with natural hazards and public safety seems like a quick way to silence CA warnings about flooding and other threats to public safety caused by natural hazards. Building more housing that causes more flooding is not an effective plan, as it damages to existing housing, rendering the efforts redundant.

This plan reduces the capacity and power of conversation authorities to protect our environment and help ensure we build in a safe and sustainable way. Gutting conservation authorities will make it much easier for developers to build suburban sprawl on farmland, wetlands, and fields. Building suburban sprawl is expensive for municipalities as it costs more to provide services to new developments, and it will lock us into unsustainable transportation patterns.

These changes destroy key land use planning processes that Ontario municipalities, conservation authorities and residents need in order to protect, manage and plan for climate-resilient ecosystems and communities.

By undermining the power of Conservation Authorities (see above), this bill would remove important measures that maintain the ecological infrastructure that reduces flooding and the impact of severe weather events.