Words cannot adequately…

Words cannot adequately express my anger and profound disappointment in the passing of Bill 23. There are so many egregious and short sighted directions in this bill, from opening the Greenbelt to greedy developers, and the subsequent downloading of infrastructure costs to local municipalities that are currently facing budget shortages without these added expenses. Those expenses will now be passed on to local residents, and face cuts in services we depend on.
The Greenbelt and surrounding watersheds provide millions of Ontarians with safe drinking water, and also serves to mitigate the increasing threat of flooding.
Flooding is a significant concern in Canada and can happen anywhere and anytime. In my riding of Northumberland Peterborough South we have had damaging flooding of our creeks and along Lake Ontario from spring snow melt, rain and howling wind and waves off Lake Ontario. Due to climate change with less lake ice, the shoreline has not been protected and waves have been eating it away. Climate change is adding to the frequency and intensity of this damage. We need our Oak Ridges Moraine and wetlands to be protected from development so they can handle rain and snow melt before flooding occurs.
Our drinking water source is the Oak Ridges Moraine. It cannot not and must not be affected by more wells and more septic systems from more development . We had a level 2 drought in 2016 for 6 months when local wells went dry, farmers could not care for their livestock and crops wilted. There is not an infinite amount of water and those who live here need our water source protected. As more and more chlorine is added to Lake Ontario water to make it potable, there may come a day when our water source is our Moraine and it needs to be protected from urban sprawl.
Farming is our largest industry and the biggest employer in Northumberland County. Our farmers have been here for up to 5 generations and want their farms to continue to provide food and agricultural products. Their stated greatest fear is urban sprawl.
Bill 23 and its effects will clearly ignore the protected boundaries of animal habitat and travel . You can't swap one piece of land for another. Studies in the USA and other areas show the fallacy of land swapping, and it's only used as a last resort, not the first choice.
Port Hope Council in our riding had a plan to expand their needed boundary for housing by purchasing the Wesleyville property for affordable housing and conservation. The government of Doug Ford stopped this agreement of purchase and sale at the 11th hour? It will undoubtedly be determined that developer friends of Doug Ford influenced this decision, much to the detriment of our local community.
Further, expanding the boundaries of developable land so it's no longer protected from that very act is urban sprawl, the very scourge the Greenbelt was established to protect.
So developers are going to be expected or legislated to fully fund all the infrastructure needed for their development? With laws that waive development fees or reduce them if the municipal planning dept doesn't act fast enough to approve their plans, the government had better legislate that all necessary infrastructure is fully funded by the developer. Further, we know infrastructure needs maintenance and replacement and that's the purpose of municipal reserve funds . Municipalities know their assets and the costs to maintain and replace them, therefore how can this provincial government suggest that these funds are idle and can be used in place of development fees?
It is so telling that this proposed legislation does not even mention affordable housing. This government does not care about the affordability of housing. To suggest that 80% of the resale value is deemed affordable when that amount is close to $800,000 in most Southern Ontario housing markets, is clearly out of reach of most middle class Ontarians.
The Galt Paris Moraine has been asked to be in the Greenbelt for years, not as a land swap. This area is already protected so the government is not giving any thing in return for Greenbelt land it wants to free up for its developer friends. There is nothing "smart" about this growth, it is urban sprawl, period, unneeded and unwanted.The Greenbelt is permanent protection for agricultural lands, and ecological and hydrological features developed over time and for good land use control and planning reasons. Bill 23 and its effects will clearly ignore the protected boundaries of the Greenbelt and start to allow urban sprawl into protected agricultural and environmentally sensitive land that took years of careful planning and wise legislation to protect. Bill 23 is NOT responsible growth. Instead it takes protected land to unnecessarily expand urban sprawl when 86,500 acres of ready to develop land outside the Greenbelt exits for development. It looks and smells like the "targeted lands" are those belonging to Premier Ford's development friends and land speculators. There are lands at Downsview for 80,000 people to live in an urban transit serviced area .
It is necessary for the Greenbelt to be as contiguous as possible to allow animals connections for their habitat and travel. Yet this government had the audacity and aggression to change that. Existing settlement areas have to have boundaries to allow the land next to them to be protected and continue to be used for needed agriculture, wetlands, forests, animal habitat, grasslands etc. Even the Ontario Affordable Housing Task Force indicates this Greenbelt 7400 acres is not needed for housing. Do the right thing and leave the Greenbelt and the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan lands alone.