Please remove Schedule 10…

Please remove Schedule 10 from Bill 66.

This schedule is of concern because it grants municipalities the ability to exempt themselves from important provisions in a host of vital pieces of provincial environmental protection legislation. Every one of these bills – The Clean Water Act, the Great Lakes Protection Act, the Greenbelt Act, the Lake Simcoe Protection Act, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, and others – exist for a reason and purpose, and have been created and passed based on our decades of collective experience as Ontarians. Our water supply, our major waterways, and our key green spaces need to be protected from short-sighted municipal decisions taken out of perceived short-term local interest. To ensure the long term health of all Ontarians, we need clean water and health, functional, connected ecosystems. Natural systems are large, and most extend across multiple municipalities.

For example, the Oak Ridges Moraine is the aquifer that provides the headwaters for 22 river systems across the GTA, filtering rainwater, maintaining ground water supply, and ultimately feeding clean water into Lake Ontario along a significant section of its shoreline. The Oak Ridges Moraine simultaneously acts as a key ecological corridor, which permits gene flow between plant and animal populations on either side of the GTA, keeping open a connection vital for the long-term sustainability of our southern ecoregions, which contain many species not found farther to the north in the province. Furthermore, it also provides reasonable access to outdoor recreation opportunities for millions of people in the GTA, and as part of the Greenbelt, hosts a growing ecotourism industry. For myself, visits to see family in the GTA also include daytime excursions to hike in this area and visit local cafes and farmers’ markets - and I always appreciate that I can drink the tap water. Appropriate protection for the Oak Ridges Moraine requires provincial oversight to guarantee coordination among every municipality found along its length.

To ensure municipal decisions are not damaging to the “big picture”, this requires continued coordination and regulation at the provincial level. Otherwise, a local decision made for a short-term local gain can have permanent deleterious effects on the quality of the environment of that municipality’s neighbours, other communities downstream, and the province as a whole.

To ensure future generations of Ontarians continue to benefit from the ecological services of a healthy, clean environment, including clean drinking water, please remove Schedule 10 from Bill 66.