I have nine objections to…

I have nine objections to the proposed change as my comments on ERO 019-3233:
1. The change is arbitrary.
2. It overrides the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS).
• Once we start making exceptions to the PPS to guide locally supported development where does it stop?
3. It makes that authority retroactive.
• It allows the selective revisiting of past decisions to circumvent a previous illegal decision (e.g., Pickering Lower Duffins Creek MZO)
4. It causes distrust of the Provincial Government decision-making process by giving the impression the government will arbitrarily changes the rules for short-term objectives not supported by the public.
5. It continues to remove consultations with Ontario residents who are most affected by a project subject to an MZO.
6. The change would allow the overriding of provincial environmental standards (Lower Duffins Creek wetlands)
7. It takes away local development planning for local projects with municipalities and replaces it with centralized Provincial government decisions.
• Note that the Provincial claim that MZOS are at the request of the municipal governments is not true. The Dominion Foundry site did not have one and, further, that site had a designated heritage status that was ignored (the plaque was taken down by contractors hired by the Province)
• Residents (and voters) of municipalities have spent years and had considerable costs to develop Official Plan and Zoning Bylaws. The MZOs with central planning by the Province would ignore this past work.
8. It sacrifices replaces sound housing planning in the name of expediency.
• It does not require local knowledge or that the infrastructure to support development be put in place as part of development requirements (schools, hospitals, parkland, emergency services, roads, pedestrian amenities, water and sewer services, protection of heritage designations)
9. Expanding the use of MZOs appears solely to have been selected to support the Provincial claim that resistance to large scale development by local residents is NIMBYism and that it needs to be “speeded up”.
• This is not true. Residents simply want to maintain or expand the service level of their local infrastructure to match the increase in infrastructure demands from added development and to make residential developments a pleasing and complementary addition to existing neighbourhoods.