I am categorically opposed…

I am categorically opposed to your proposal to double the amount of industrial logging in Ontario. This proposal completely ignores our biodiversity commitments, including safeguarding the habitat of imperilled species, such as boreal caribou. In fact your administration has virtually declared war on protected species in the poorly conceived idea that by doing so the province will somehow return to prosperity. I see no evidence that this will be the case and the current administration has totally failed to provide such.

I am also very opposed to this administration's corporate welfare approach. Using tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year to expand the logging road network is an unacceptable subsidy for any industry. Enough forest access roads have been built and maintained in Ontario to drive across Canada and back. Those roads cost the public purse about $60 million per year. It doesn't take much imagination to grasp how much could be done to relieve the province's crushing debt without these needless expenditures. This smacks of the Trudeau government's handouts to large corporations like Loblaws, Canadian Tire and Master Card. It's loathsome for any government to hand over taxpayer's hard earned money to giant corporations. It's triply so coming from a conservative administration whom many of us believed would be better stewards of tax dollars than the socialist governments it replaced. We should not be using ANY taxes to fund and/or subsidize ANY business whatsoever.

Forestry corporations have no more right to the province's natural resources than any other citizen. It is absolutely unacceptable that these businesses are given SUBSIDIZED and unfettered use of every Ontarian's birthright merely for their own profits. Your strategy is misguided. I cannot urge you strongly enough to make serious changes that end corporate welfare and enshrine environmental protections for all species but most particularly those species whose very existence is being threatened by human activities.

This administration cannot be unaware of the declining wildlife populations in the province. Human caused climate change is a reality despite the government's attempts to pretend it is not. Forests and wetlands are important for their ability to capture carbon and neutralize pollution. Deforestation is a disturbing mistake in light of the ample evidence of the importance of preserving forests as a mitigation against carbon emissions and for the valuable habitat it provides for creatures imperiled by our activities.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that your proposals are unnecessary. The forestry industry acknowledges there is a massive surplus of forest they could be logging but aren’t. The forestry industry has already negotiated regulatory exemptions from Ontario’s Endangered Species Act. It's not the availability of timber that is causing the "underutilization" of Ontario's forest resources. It's market forces. Raping our forests and the threatened and endangered species that call them home won't change that. Try reducing the province's share of the HST if you really want to stimulate the economy.

Just keep your hands off the environment.