This bill is a terrible,…

This bill is a terrible, retrograde, and anti-democratic piece of legislation, effectively side-stepping essential environmental and other protections. These protections were put in place over decades, by elected governments of different parties, based on significant research and consultation.

This bill would allow municipalities to avoid public consultation with the people whose lives, communities, environment and livelihoods will be affected by the development. It views land only in terms of material wealth to benefit the few -- in the form of development of for-profit housing, or corporate interests such as industry and extraction.

Land and water are essential, non-renewable resources. They are part of our heritage as Ontarians. The Green Belt, Oak Ridges Moraine, Great Lakes, Clean Water and other protections Acts protect our water supply and our natural environment, and improve the quality of our air.

We need clean water, in good supply, and these areas are the watershed for the GTA. Industry has a long history of poisoning our waters, or selling them off to other countries in plastic bottles -- yielding material gain for shareholders, but no local benefit.

This bill is being falsely touted as being about solving the housing crisis. I have worked in human rights, housing, and planning matters for many years. You solve the housing crisis by measures like: properly regulating rental and bought housing; having genuine rent controls, including applying regulations to ALL rental housing and limiting increases between tenants; curbing out-of-control and insufficiently regulated Air BnB activities; setting out inclusionary zoning regulations; and requiring developers to create barrier-free, accessible housing with a set percentage of dedicated low-cost affordable housing.

You also solve the housing crisis by requiring that people be paid fair, living wages (such as $15 minimum wage and through Pay Equity legislation), and by providing adequate financial support to people who cannot work due to disability, work enough to meet their needs, or who are out of work.

These strategies have been shown to work, in many cities and towns in North America and around the world.

The government must act in the public interest -- for the people.

People want clean air and water, and we need these beautiful protected green spaces -- to visit, for tourism, and to maintain our water and help counteract the poor air quality caused by our cities and industry.

People need affordable, supportive, and low-cost rental housing, not just more poorly planned urban and suburban sprawl to benefit developers and those diminishing numbers of Ontarians who can afford to buy a new home.

Environmental and heritage protections must not be waived for developers or industry, and not for individual elected members' or their friends' financial gain. Developers are not suffering, they have been building unabated, at great profit, for decades.

I would like to see Ontario be competitive in the ways that really count, and in the ways that a government _should_ be competitive: in protecting the environment, meeting the needs of the poor, growing the middle class, and regulating and preventing the excesses of corporations that act in their financial interested, rather in the public interest.

This bill will allow immeasurable, permanent harm, and should not be passed.