I am deeply concerned about…

I am deeply concerned about several aspects of this bill.

Firstly, repealing the requirement that employers are required to post posters about the Employment Standards Act in their workplaces is petty. It should remain the obligation of employers to inform their employees about their rights under the Employment Standards Act, and to make sure those employees remain aware of these rights. "Providing a poster" when an employee first joins an organization is an excellent way to ensure that employees stay ignorant of their rights, since these posters will be forgotten in the deluge of new information an employee receives.

Secondly, repealing the Pawnbroker's Act seems bizarre, especially since there appear to be no replacement rules for pawnbrokers. I do not what is motivating this change, but I think the intent of the 2018 amendments to ensure that pawnshops report usage to the police is sound. What rules will govern pawnshops now.

The changes in Schedule 10 have received the most press, and I share these concerns. This bill purports to "cut unnecessary regulations that are inefficient, inflexible or out of date", but it is not clear to me that the Oak Ridge Moraine Act, the Clean Water Act, the Places to Grow Act or the Greenbelt Act are unnecessary, inefficient or out of date. They may be inflexible, but that is by design -- the more flexibility they have the greater the chance that powerful interests will pressure municipalities to bend the rules.

This section of the bill is a disaster. It is a cowardly move to allow development in supposedly-protected areas (something the current government promised it would not allow) via a back door, because the government is too cowardly to repeal the legislation outright.

There have been two recent news events that make this even more worrisome. Developers have a lot of power in this province, and without strong legislation to curtail that power they will have their way with municipalities. First, there is the story of how the former mayor of Caledon was bullied and pressured by a developer, as reported here: https://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/papa-pump-and-the-small-town-sha… . What protections will there be to ensure that municipalities are not coerced by developers into bypassing legislation? Even putting aside the overtly illegal actions documented in the episode, there was enough borderline-legal pressure to make me worried that municipalities that would prefer to resist development will not be able to do so.

Secondly, it has come out that political pressure group "Ontario Proud" (which took a strong pro-OPC stance during the election) was funded largely by developers: https://www.canadalandshow.com/ontario-proud-mostly-funded-by-developer… . The Ontario government should be passing legislation in the best interests of Ontarians, not in the best interests of those groups who help get the current government elected. It is not fair play to bring this up, but it is a reality of the political environment in which we live.