There will be no land to…

There will be no land to live on without proper environmental protections, rules and regulations. I do not support this proposal and I am incredibly disappointed with this major proposed step backwards. If we continue to reverse and pull back and go backwards, what stops us from falling into the same lines of thinking that caused the DDT crisis, acid rain and the continued purposeful ignorance of important facets of what makes an ecosystem healthy.

Organisms are more than just their 'home dwelling'. Many animals and plants do not live on time and geographic scales as us and cannot be confined to a den or the area just beyond its critical root mass. Many mammals who are known to have dens only create dens when they are with offspring. During the non breeding season, they move, they explore, they come back to a variety of different places that if we did not study, we would have no idea that we would be removing a critical part of their habitat (because habitat is NOT just where they go to sleep at night). The Canadian Wildlife Federation put it best: "A basking log is not a habitat. A single plant is not a forest. Species at risk deserve better.⁠"

The very notion that studying these things to properly understand before we break ground is inconvenient is dangerous. It is selfish, and while I understand Ontario is growing and requires more infrastructure, this is not the way to go. What happens to the hundreds of environmental staff that investigate and work with species at risk for the betterment of not only the province but the country? What happens when all of these protections are removed?

We are a forefront in the protection of endangered species for the last 20 years! It does not matter if the rest of the world does it one way, or its cheaper or easier. Just because the majority does it one way dos not make it right.

Allowing developers to cut corners like this is incredibly reckless and in another 10 years we will look around and wonder where all the nature has gone. It is dead, and we killed it.