I am a mother of two little…

I am a mother of two little boys (2 yrs and 4 yrs) with a Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies. I am STRONGLY against the idea of "Special Economic Zones."

Legislation like this deeply endangers a secure future for my children in the name of economic prosperity for a few companies. This short-term economic gain (because in the span of humanities lifetime, a few decades of profit, IS short term) is at great long-term loss for the biodiversity and climate stability of our province.

I want my kids to feel like the world they live in is safe, and whenever a government chooses to cut corners with environmental protections, as is proposed in the "Special Economic Zones Act," that government is choosing profit over peoples safety.

I am already being forced to have difficult conversations about the climate with my children. When the wildfires took over northern Ontario and Quebec a few years ago, I had to explain to my asthmatic son why he could not play outside for multiple days in a row. My oldest routinely shows mental distress about smelling exhausts fumes, seeing garbage on the ground, at the loss of a tree to severe weather or felling, and has started asking us to change to an electric car to reduce the pollution we create as a family.

My child is only 4 year old. A Kindergartener, experiencing climate anxiety. It is not his job to find climate solutions, it is yours.

Please do better for our kids, and keep necessary environmental protections in place, or better yet, add more! Lets get back to Conservative values and CONSERVE the environment.

Thank you for your time.