Bill 23 is wanton and…

Bill 23 is wanton and reckless and should be repealed in its entirety. This Bill is a thinly-veiled attempt to pander to developers and land speculators under the guise of addressing the housing "supply" issue (not affordable housing). It is like taking a chain saw to cut a piece of paper and will do nothing but create chaos, confusion, and environmental destruction, leaving taxpayers to pay for all the problems it will create.

Prohibiting conservation authorities from commenting on "non-mandate" issues through the planning process will not "speed up" the approval process. All it will do is put the burden of commenting on natural environment issues on municipalities, who do not typically have the expertise, data, or knowledge to do this. The environment will suffer and be degraded. The impact of environmental degradation will only impact the residents of Ontario. It is well known that spending time in nature has benefits on human wellbeing - the pandemic proved this. We also know that protecting the natural environment will help build resilience in communities to the impacts of a changing climate. It is impossible to protect life and property from flooding and erosion (so called core mandate issues) without also protecting the natural environment. So protecting the natural environment helps with flooding and erosion AND climate change, supposedly what Minister Clark says conservation authorities should focus on.

Changing the definition of watercourse will mean that streams will be buried and their functions lost, like flood attenuation and water quality improvement. Changing the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System will mean that wetlands can no longer be complexed, and individual, small wetlands will score lower. This will mean lower levels of protection for wetlands and additional wetland losses, which is so short-sited given their role in flood attenuation, among the many other benefits wetlands provide to society.

Removing "conservation of land" and "pollution" from the tests for the CA Act will mean that there will be little ability for conservation authorities to protect land and water quality.

Removing the planning function of upper-tier municipalities will result in planning "chaos" as planning beyond lower-tier municipal boundaries will be uncoordinated and poorly planned.

I implore Minister Clark to stop this short-sited bill from wreaking havoc on the people of Ontario. It will do nothing to speed up the delivery of housing supply. Instead, the Province should focus on improving collaboration between the players and continue to streamline processes.