I would like to express my…

I would like to express my disappointment in the provincial government's action on the MZOs. As a resident of the area and someone who uses every single part of the infrastructure that is located in Midtown, I cannot fathom how our government and the officials who are meant to protect us are using MZOs to force extreme and reckless density on Midtown, more than double that of any comparable development in the GTA, without the infrastructure to support it.

If you would come to Oakville GO at any point between 7-10 AM or between 4-7 PM, you will personally experience the breaking point that our infrastructure is at, the long delays on Cross Avenue and Trafalgar and the wait times that drivers and transit owners alike have to put up with while simply just exiting the GO station and get onto any connecting road. This further adds on when we have to turn onto Trafalgar or take the highway. Our transportation infrastructure is overwhelmed and cannot put up with this incredibly high demand that the proposed development is imposing. I would invite the decision-makers behind this development to spend a fraction of their time actually inside our community before they make such a careless and ill-conceived investment.

Similarly, our family clinics and the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital's ERs have massive wait times and they are overcapacity at regular times, let alone what happened during the pandemic. Our services are already stretched thin and this high-density development will cause further chaos - our community and our residents deserve better than this. I take these roads every single day, I depend on these services and I can assure you that the people proposing and supporting these MZOs have never once experienced them - hence why there is such a gap in what our town needs and what is being proposed.

I would like to note here that the Town’s OPA 70 already permits densities up to 6.0 FSI, which is very high by any North American standard, making these massive densities neither necessary nor acceptable. The MZOs would also eliminate affordable housing requirements, which is what is actually needed - and what the province and developers have been using to justify such high-density developments. This TOD is not about delivering housing; it is about maximizing developer land value at the expense of livability, infrastructure capacity, and the public interest. We deserve better.

I also find it incredibly misleading for our province and developers to use the term transit-oriented community (TOC) for two reasons:
1. You are not actually building a community. You are building multiple massive, cookie-cutter, box-apartment style high-rise buildings with limited to no green space for residents and no actual meaningful community engagement.
2. Oakville is not a transit community - we have the GO station yes but the existing transit service in Oakville connecting us to neighboring areas and even within the town requires people to have a car. So every single person in this development will need to have a car, especially if they have kids and need access to daycare and schools. Where will those cars go? On streets and roads that cannot handle them, creating the same cycle of problems under the guise of decision-makers wanting to be sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not feasible. What is the point of these massive high-rises if you don't have the infrastructure to actually make sure they are transit-based.

I vote NO for these MZOs and strongly oppose this. Our residents are not anti-development - we want to invite more people to our town, we want Oakville to grow and be more prosperous and create affordable spaces for our children and grandchildren but what this TOD and MZO proposal is calling for will in no way improve the quality of life of our community or generate any meaningful value. I encourage our leaders and decision-makers to listen to their constituents and what they have been saying since Day 1 and push for developers to actually meet the real need rather than maximize their profits.

It is truly a terrible day for our province when they are forcing through orders like the MZOs to override what our people and our communities have been constantly and consistently saying. Make meaningful investments in housing that actually improve the quality of life of people and lead to people wanting to stay - not absurdly high-density TODs in areas with no infrastructure to manage the demand you will impose. Again, I strongly vote NO for the MZO. Thank you.