While it is essential to…

While it is essential to create housing in the short term to accommodate the espected immigration influx, it is more important to consider the longer term implications of loss of agricultural land, of loss of forests, deterioration of streams, depletion of acquifers and climate change. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. Building subdivisions, i.e.Urban Sprawl , was an idea spawned in the post war world made possible by the automobile, and is frankly, the enemy. Intensification and densifaction within existing urban areas is the only way we should and can make room for more housing. Urban planners assure us we have more than enough land ready for development that there is no need to open up valuable agricultural and ecologically essential land to the ravages of developers and their bulldozers. We need to make a cultural shift away from the "Canadian Dream" of owning a single house on a big lot to one that is common throughout Europe. Smaller homes, communal type settings, access to public services like parks as well as transportation. Getting the job done also means getting the job right and it is essential that the government ensures it gets done correctly.