Premier, Cabinet, Ministers,…

Premier, Cabinet, Ministers, MPPs and Staff,

We are writing on behalf of the 500+ members of Smart Growth Waterloo Region - a group focussed on ensuring thriving dynamic urban areas while protecting our countryside. We have been active for over a decade helping to shape the Waterloo Region Official Plans, promote Light Rail Transit (LRT), and working with our municipalities on the needed sustainable local official plans.

After helping to ensure our most recent very progressive Regional Official Plan had input from thousands of citizens and was strong endorsed by all our local governments, our membership has been horrified by the approach of this provincial government - overriding our sustainable plan for intensification and growing within our communities - affordably delivering more housing units than the province is seeking and instead having the province force thousands of acres of unnecessary urban sprawl destroying the local farms and groundwater areas we are so dependent on.

This housing is not where people want to live, it is not likely to be affordable and it is not likely to be supported by much public transit if any. We cannot afford the infrastructure and the cuts to development charges is ensuring that our local municipalities can't afford it either. This is not in the best public interest at all but seems to delight numerous billionaire developers and land speculators who have driven our farmland to prices unaffordable to most new and aspiring farmers.

The proposal to allow 3 severances per farm is absurd and while it will do little to provide affordable, desired housing it will devastate our countryside and our ability to grow food efficiently in the future.
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.

It has been 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 - just outrageous profits by restricting supply.

The new definitions for the Agricultural System and the Natural Heritage System (NHS) are far too vague and troublesome - we need more protection not less in the midst of the climate crisis that is just starting to unfold.

We need a PPS that carefully guides growth and manages resources across Ontario - instead the new PPS focuses only on housing supply at the expense of most other considerations - in particular the need for climate change adaptation and future survival.

There is little that this current government is doing that is actually going to address our housing crisis, improve affordability, and provide our citizens with the sustainable, survivable future needed.

We urge the government to abandon these currently proposed policies and instead focus on the sustainable, complete communities with the missing middle, accessory units and intensification that will deliver the future that we need and far better address the current issues.

Thank you.