I firmly believe that…

I firmly believe that schedule 10 is a terrible item for legislation that will only result in a race to the bottom among municipalities. It will only serve to lower the quality of life for Ontario residents who would have little to no say in how municipalities wield the power to bypass environmental regulations.

Providing a means to bypass these protections would cause an economic impact by damaging the environmental services areas such as the greenbelt provide, (which alone, for example, provides services valued at approximately $2.6 billion annually), which would be an enormous drag on GDP growth. It will also inevitably make Ontarian's ill, making event's such as the Walkerton E. coli outbreak far more likely.

The government must remove Schedule 10 from Bill 66. No municipality should be allowed to override provisions in the Greenbelt Act, Clean Water Act, Lake Simcoe Act, Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act and Great Lakes Protection Act.

These protections provide a clean and prosperous environment for Ontario, something fundamental to attract and retain business.