Wetlands take millennium to…

Wetlands take millennium to form, and minutes to destroy. “It will take both short-term strategies and long-term commitment from all levels of government, the private sector, and not-for-profits to drive change. Each entity will have to do their part to be part of the solution to this crisis.”

As a child in Ontario, I was told conservation was to be achieved through cooperation and it was vital to the health of my parents, grandparents, and future generations. I was disheartened as an adult to read the above sentence, written from the perspective of destroying the wetlands we were taught were ecologically and culturally vital to our futures, for houses.

Wetlands provide a buffer against flooding, they provide important habitat to endangered and threatened species, they are a carbon sink that help slow climate change, they purify water before it enters the lakes that we swim and fish in, as well as draw our drinking water from. Wetlands are important locations for agricultural purposes, they are locations where we educate our young about the importance of protecting wildlife and safeguarding our environment for the future.

As an adult, I cannot fathom where this proposal came from. I am an adult, looking to buy a house, but I would never want that house to have been built at the sacrifice of a protected wetland. This proposal at its core seeks to diminish the protections around wetlands, and looks to quantify one part of a wetland as being more important than another. That is a slippery slope. Before we blink, we could have no wetlands if this proposal proceeds.

In a time of population growth we need to consider the long term as well as short term importance of wetlands. In 50 years we will need more food, more clean water, more opportunities for recreation and tourism. Areas that do not reach the 600 point milestone today will reach this milestone in a few short years. Prior to considering wetlands as sites of development, we should be prioritizing redeveloping swaths of land that are already developed, but are underdeveloped. Buildings empty due to expired leases, building underground parking with condos above rather than having huge tarmacs of open air parking, re-purpose empty office buildings to housing complexes, build up, not out, to reduce the amount of new land needed for housing, repair government housing to adequate states so people don’t feel they have to get out of inferior housing situations, provide landlord incentives to upgrade dilapidated spaces to be suitable for housing. There are many options to explore before destroying wetlands that will never recover, will never provide services to the community again.

Reducing the protections on wetlands is shortsighted, focuses on building quick profits for the few, provides a band-aid solution to a larger problem, and is effectively a very bad idea.

The people of Ontario did not vote for this. Doug Ford’s campaign included green belt protections, not greenbelt destructions. We, the People of Ontario have been deceived. We have been mislead and lied to. We are supposed to sacrifice our futures for the short term profits of a few developers. I am strongly opposed to the proposed changes to Bill 23. It is unacceptable to diminish the protections to our wetlands.

Developing wetlands will devalue Ontario in the long run. We will experience more flooding, have lower water quality, have less fertile agricultural land to grow food, have less ability to cope with rising carbon amounts. we will experience more detrimental effects from climate change, and will lose endangered and threatened species forever. We will lose tourism and recreational profits associated directly or indirectly with wetlands and the above listed activities.

We have to explain these choices in 30 years to our children. This is a very bad choice. Building homes is not a good enough reason to destroy our wetlands when there are other options available. Once more, in the words of Bill 23, from the much more ecologically, socially, and economically important perspective of protecting our wetlands: “It will take both short-term strategies and long-term commitment from all levels of government, the private sector, and not-for-profits to drive change. Each entity will have to do their part to be part of the solution to this crisis.”