The public understands the…

The public understands the rationale for additional housing in Ontario, as they know Canada will be taking immigrants and they all know people having trouble finding a place to buy or rent.
However, I object to the continued pressure by the provincial government to place additional responsibilities on municipalities without providing support for them. I live in central Ontario, east of Toronto, in an area of rural municipalities. All of the items in section 4, above, require expertise that municipalities do not have and are better provided by provincial ministries which are able to hire specialists to focus on these tasks. The extensive mapping requirements are unlikely to be well met by small and mid-sized municipalities which have trouble retaining employees skilled in these areas. To actually implement these requirements, municipalities will be forced to raise property taxes far above inflation to support these activities, making current owners less able to afford their properties. This will only result in more people without homes, living on the streets, which is already becoming a greater issue in rural areas. This policy statement only provides additional challenges and requirements for municipalities and is completely lacking in support by the province.
While increasing the number of severances allowed on farm lots (proposed in Bill 97 and in 4.3.3 of the PPS) may increase the possible locations for houses to potentially be built, this is a terrible idea. Rural road are already littered with houses and more and more are being built all the time, prior to the implementation of either of these policies. These houses must have their own well and septic system but we all know that that groundwater is connected and having many houses in a small area on individual water and septic is not sustainable. Additionally, because they are in the country, they require residents to have a vehicle and heat sources brought in which is not sustainable. The majority of homes being built in the country currently seem like estates and are not modest or affordable or sustainable by any stretch of the imagination. They frequently provide a home for only one or two people who commute increasingly long distances for employment, since there is rarely much employment, aside from agriculture, in rural centres. The people who purchase these homes usually bring urban ideas about lawn care, garbage collection, and healthcare services, for example, to the rural area, placing additional pressure on our wildlife, municipalities, and public health. They don't want to smell the manure of a farm or hear rocks being crushed to gravel all day.
Farmland is finite and in Ontario, a huge amount of prime farmland has already been turned into houses. Expanding subdivisions increase the distance food must travel to those who eat it and decrease the sustainability of communities. Increased housing in rural areas also increases human impact on natural communities, putting even more pressure on ecosystems already faced with climate change and other human-caused impacts.
One of the questions above asks about barriers to accelerating development and completely disregards the negative consequences of accelerated development. Hurried work is rarely well done and results in decision-making based on incomplete information and rushed consultation. Land-use planning is very complex because there are so many varied challenges due to the interactions of humans, transportation, resource extraction, watersheds, and natural heritage aspects. Speeding the process up will inevitably result in errors small and large. Additionally, constructing buildings is not simple since it also has many interacting trades. People spend a lot of time in their homes and want them to be safe and special. Rushing the process results in poor workmanship; for something that people expect to last decades and be a healthy space to exist, care, not speed, is what is important.
In closing, I want to urge the province to support municipalities make wise decisions regarding land-use planning, focus development in existing urban areas (not rural regions), with a careful measured process.