Bill 5 is an outright home…

Bill 5 is an outright home grown assault on Ontario's self-sustainability and reliance in the face of catastrophic climate change and the machinations of foreign governments who would seek to undermine our sovereignty. Yet this Bill, which offers up the province's water sources for profit to whomever, in perpetuity, over the needs of those who live here, has been presented by the very same government which claims to put our province's needs first.

How is it possible to accept Bill 5's proposed changes which could create a water-taking system that operates without scrutiny, without environment assessment, without public comment, and without the duty to consult Indigenous nations - a principle that this province is bound to honour?

Egregiously, Bill 5 could functionally privatize and commodify public waters that belong to the people of this province. They are not a gift to be handed out by a short term and shortsighted administration. The whole scheme is at complete odds with the needs of our province, yet, sadly, typical of this sorry administration that is absolutely failing in its duty to exercise governance, the meaning of which seems to have escaped those now in office.

Furthermore, Bill 5 provides a mechanism to strip the province's water sources to the bone. It's a nefarious, dangerous and insidious handout to those entities who would seek to use this form of uncontrolled extraction to line their own pockets through the commodification of a resource that must belong freely and in abundance to the people of this province. Ontario's waters are not to be handed up as a prize to Big Ugly Business, whether from here or from abroad.

These are the reasons why I feel Bill 5 is so incomprehensible and reprehensible and why it should go into the dustbin of history.

Thank you.