ERO #019-6813 – Review of…

ERO #019-6813 – Review of proposed policies adapted from A Place to Grow and PPS to form a new provincial planning policy instrument.

Premier Doug Ford, Minister Clark, Minister Thompson, other Cabinet Members, MPPs and Staff,

It is with complete horror and astonishment that I am writing to you to state my family’s strong opposition to replace the PPS and Growth Plan for the GGH with a new Provincial Planning Statement.

The changes being proposed are the opposite of SMART Growth, undo decades of good planning, and would allow for rampant urban sprawl, massive farmland loss and completely prevent Ontario from reaching our climate change goals under the Paris Accord.

We need to ensure complete, compact, sustainable, transit supported, efficient communities – not encourage the very automobile dependent, inefficient, 1960’s style urban sprawl that has created our climate catastrophe and destroyed our planet in the first place.

While there is no doubt that we are in a housing crisis, the schemes being proposed by this government are only going to greatly worsen the housing crisis and do the opposite of improving affordability, providing the missing middle housing, and creating the sustainable communities of the future we are going to need.

Worst of all is the completely absurd proposed rural farmland severance policy to allow 3 severances per farm – even on prime farmland for up to a total of 12 homes on every farm. The implications of this are staggering – not only for efficient farming, MDS regulations, and ensuring we can produce enough food to feed our population in the future but even for things like rural schools, infrastructure, highway entrances, the electrical grid, internet and telephony infrastructure, rural hospitals, etc. It has never been anticipated to relocate hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people scattered across the rural parts of the province in the most inefficient manner possible. The implications and costs we will all pay are staggering – particularly compared to the far more sustainable options to properly house people within existing communities where much infrastructure already exists (and may even be currently underutilized) without destroying our countryside, farms, groundwater recharge and natural areas.

It has been clearly demonstrated and become broadly accepted that land for development is not the issue – there is no land shortage – there is decades of land supply already designated in municipalities across the province and developers have been sitting on massive inventories for years as there is no approval expiry and no incentive for them to move forward to meet the market needs – in fact, the opposite by restricting supply they keep prices high and ensure constant demand at premium prices.

The proposed removal of intensification targets and population forecasting is confounding and allowing municipalities to expand settlement areas anytime without and MCR or justification is a recipe for disaster that will bankrupt many municipalities in the years ahead.

The ongoing attacks on our Conservation Authorities and the continued weakening of watershed planning will be looked upon by future generations as unfathomable and will guarantee Doug Ford a place in history as one of the most short-sighted leaders ever to be removing the safeguards and common sense policies put into place to protect people and infrastructure. Much like there are the Darwin Awards currently recognizing people who have done humanity a favour by ending their genetic lineage and removing their not so smart genes from the gene pool, I predict future Ford Awards will be used to describe something done only for greed and profit, defying all common sense, greater public good and even basic human safety in an era of rapid climate change and climate chaos.

Which brings up the absolutely logic-defying removal and weakening of all policies addressing climate change. At a time that the rest of the world is moving forward, increasing resilience and preparing for a very different future, here is our provincial government moving in the opposite direction and dooming future generations.

My family and I urge you for the sake of our children – currently 4 and 6 years old to abandon these confounding, absurd and poorly considered proposed policy changes and go in the opposite direction of providing the sustainable solutions we need for the future, building upon our current world-leading successful planning system, and implementing regulations that will actually solve our housing challenges while preparing our province for the climate crisis we are already facing.

Thank you!