ERO Submission for Waterloo…

ERO Submission for Waterloo Regional Official Plan

Premier Doug Ford, Minister Steve Clark, Cabinet and MPPs,

Please approve the Waterloo Regional Official Plan ROPA 6 without any changes as it has already been passed unanimously by all of our area municipalities and strongly approved by Waterloo Regional Council after years of efforts and overwhelming support from thousands of citizens, community groups, businesses, and organizations throughout our region.

This is the visionary, sustainable 30-year plan that we need with complete 15-minute walkable communities, public transit, active transportation, housing choice and housing affordability along with continued protection for the local farms, natural areas, wetlands, and groundwater recharge areas our region is so uniquely dependent on without any pipelines to great lakes and having to live within the carry capacity of our watershed.

Any disruption to the natural balance we have strived to maintain within our watershed for decades could have devastating consequences hundreds of times worse than the Walkerton water crisis. By staying within the carrying capacity of our watershed combined with our Source-Water Protection Areas, Countryside Line, Protected Countryside, ESPA’s and Environmentally Sensitive Landscapes (ESL’s) we have significantly grown our population while improving water efficiency and avoiding a multi-billion dollar pipeline to Lake Erie that would have to be primarily funded by the province.

Our new Regional Official Plan Amendment 6 proposes to build more than 120,000 new homes in a far more accelerated schedule and far more affordably than the only 70,000 new homes being sought by the province as our share of the 1.5 million new home initiative.

By focussing on the missing middle, new accessory units, affordable apartments and infill we can quickly build far more than the required homes far more affordably for purchasers/renters and far more affordably for municipalities by building within existing urban areas where needed infrastructure already exists and/or can be provided more economically.

This is the far superior way to get housing built quickly in the complete, walkable communities with the rapid, frequent public transit citizens are demanding – particularly compared to destroying irreplaceable farmland for distant urban sprawl communities far from shops, services, schools and jobs with little hope of public transit anytime soon creating car-dependency and massive climate impacts that we know we can no longer afford.

We know that our Regional Official Plan is the right plan for our community for the coming decades, that builds upon our already tremendously successful trajectory of Smart Growth, core renewal and our booming economy – unique in not only Southwestern Ontario but pretty much all of Canada and North America.

We are succeeding beyond all dreams – attracting the world’s leading companies like Google, Toyota, and so many others that now employ thousands in our region – making us one of the fastest growing areas in all of North America.

Our Official Plans and proven success in pioneering visionary planning principles should be the model for the entire province – not something to be overridden and destroyed by the Premier, Minister, or anyone from outside our Region. We have been successful like few others and we have the unique, broadly agreed upon plan that we need to continue our success and become an example of successful sustainability for the entire world.

I am attaching a detailed submission document that was submitted earlier detailing how Waterloo Region is unique and this ROPA 6 is the that our community needs for the future.

We do not want to see our Mennonites driven off their farms by unnecessary urban sprawl. We have shown in the attached submission how it is ROPA 6, created by our community that is in the best public interest and that will best achieve the objectives of solving any housing shortage most efficiently, faster, and more sustainably than what the province has been forcing elsewhere.

Additionally, our ROPA 6 is broadly supported by First Nations, conforms to the Growth Plan, meets the requirements of the Planning Act, the Provincial Policy Statement, and LNA methodology. As our submission concludes – there is no provincial policy basis that requires or even supports Ministerial modifications to ROPA 6.

Please support the citizens of Waterloo Region and ensure that we continue our current successful, sustainable trajectory by approving ROPA 6 intact, with our plans for more housing, faster and more efficiently than the provincial plan, as approved by our Councils, and without any changes or modifications in particular any changes that would threaten our thriving farms, our needed greenspace and natural areas, our essential groundwater recharge areas/water aquifers, our core renewal, Smart Growth and globally leading unique success.

Thank you.