I am writing as a concerned…

I am writing as a concerned Ontarian, regarding the alarming changes proposed in Bill 5, The Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025. With the current state of the environment, I find this proposal to be rather short-sighted in providing our community with sustainable and resilient development. By allowing contractors to break ground the moment they are registered online, it is a fast-track towards land degradation and poor-quality development – for the environment, its vulnerable species, and for the people who wish to find reasonable housing. We want a robust infrastructure, without cutting corners in development; saving a couple months or years in development [by skipping over assessments for protecting endangered species and ecological zones] will lead to decades of ongoing crisis management, as infrastructure ages.

You can look no further than the Don River, to see how infrastructure was hastily developed on old floodplains, without the consideration of ecosystems and habitats back in the 50s - by diverting all the storm surges to the river over the decades, it has now become a regular flooding zone. Hurricane Hazel, the catalyst for the formation of TRCA from 70 years ago, highlighted the importance of land conservation in planning development; we cannot overlook the consequences of disrupting the environment, in favour of “faster housing”. We cannot ignore the importance of conserving the wetlands and the species that inhabit this ecosystem in Ontario, as they are all intrinsic to the maintenance of the watershed systems; it will lead to impacts that can and will affect our developing infrastructure.

If we do not seriously consider the conservation of our environment, and the species that help sustain that environment, we may lose it all in the end.