The Ford government does not…

The Ford government does not appear to be working in the best interests of the people and lands of Ontario and I’m extremely dissatisfied with their governance. This is one more example of their short-sighted plans that fail to understand or consider natural heritage planning, and the critical importance of protecting and managing natural heritage features, species and processes. Their motives for providing more housing are highly suspect and appear to be taking advantage of the housing crisis to create opportunities for more development.

No rationale for the selection of properties to remove from the Greenbelt have been provided in this proposal. While the properties are identified in mapping there is no supporting documentation of the rationale. Were additional properties considered? Was an evaluation process used to identify which properties were selected? What criteria were considered? Did the criteria include natural environment, social and cultural impacts? Were provincial natural heritage staff and private natural heritage consultants consulted on these decisions? How were their comments incorporated into the selection of properties? If this type of study was not undertaken, why not?

Studies (such as How Much Habitat is Enough?, Government of Canada) have previously been completed on how much habitat we need to protect viable wildlife populations and help maintain selected ecosystem functions and attributes and we are no where near achieving it in the municipalities where changes are proposed, nor do we have plans in place to achieve the minimum targets, yet more development is proposed in these municipalities.
I ask that further rationale be provided that explains why these changes are needed in the specific locations identified as raised above.

In addition, what we need is a clear plan of how to address the housing crisis in a way that does not put our natural environment at risk. Continuing housing development in the status quo approach of large expensive homes is not a reasonable solution.