Bill 23 cannot be passed. It…

Bill 23 cannot be passed. It is a direct threat to the future safety and well being of residents in Ontario.

We are in a climate emergency. Bill 23 is proposing paving over protected habitats that are providing VITAL services to the surrounding communities and to the world. These wetlands provide flood planes that are critical to ensure surrounding communities are protected from these effects. We need that protection now, and in the future as our climate changes and we see more climate related disasters.

With COP15 happening in Canada, we cannot pretend we prioritize protecting biodiversity if Bill 23 is passed. It would destroy habitat for many endangered species such as the redside dace, a minnow which used to be abundant in this province, but there are now only 6 stable populations. This may not sound important, but our ecosystems are a delicate balance, and we heavily rely on them being predictable and constant. The more we destroy these natural habitats and drive species to extinction, the more we are only making it harder for ourselves to exist on this planet by making our climate unpredictable and inconsistent.

Schedules 1 and 9 of Bill 23 propose amending the City of Toronto Act and the Planning Act to remove the authority of municipalities to impose conditions on new site plan approval related to sustainability and/or building exteriors in new building design. This means that the City will be very limited in what they can require of new development in terms of energy efficiency, infrastructure for active transportation, green infrastructure, bird friendly design, etc. Existing green standards like the Toronto Green Standard would be rendered obsolete or no longer enforceable. This would basically leave it up to developers to implement sustainability in new building designs on a purely voluntary basis. We need to impose higher environmental standards for buildings that we want to be around for the future. Bill 23 directly goes against this.

We have the answers about how to address this climate crisis. It will take protecting the critical habitats we have remaining in SW Ontario, building infrastructure that increases density in our cities instead of destroying natural habitat for urban sprawl, and creating infrastructure that helps people have the climate friendly lifestyles we are all so desperately craving.

We are in a climate emergency. Bill 23 ensures that Ontario is on, as the UN chief Guterres said, “the highway to climate hell”. For these reasons Bill 23 needs to be revoked. We can work together to solve the climate crisis. Bill 23 is not how we do that.