As a tax-paying Ontario…

As a tax-paying Ontario resident who cares deeply about land use decisions, I object to the way Bill 185 seeks to remove the public’s ability to appeal the adoption or amendment of Offical Plans and Zoning By-laws except for developers.

It is important to maintain the long standing right of the public to appeal local land use decisions to the Ontario Land Tribunal. Tax payers deserve to have a say in how their neighbourhood develops. Please do not deny our rights.

Bill 185 rips apart regional planning. Under Two Tier Planning - the upper tier has the luxury and time to do visionary planning in a region - especially in regions where watershed planning is important. Land use decisions have major long term impacts and deserve to have the best imputs.

Lower tier municipalities will be under serious pressure for sprawl development. Many municipalities do not have the planning staff capacity to do best practices land use planning.
Only 5% of the land mass in Ontario is suitable for growing food. Why would you sacrifice this precious resource for housing. Urban sprawl enabled by Bill 185 will produce a tragedy for Ontario. We will never recoup lost farmland and years of sound land use planning will be lost. Scattered development in farming areas removes agricultural land from production. Development directly removes farmland's agricultural productivity. Farmers are already dealing with the major challenge of climate change. https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-provincial-climate-change-impact-as… Bill 185 will permanently harm Ontario’s ability to grow food.

Low density housing developments on Greenfield will not help Ontario reach it’s housing goals.
The vast majority of Ontario residents can’t afford a single family home. We need the missing middle as recommended by the HATF. Don’t ignore your own report. The Ontario government’s Housing Affordability Task Force report recommended four-plexes as of right throughout the province. Greater density in urban areas is the cheapest way to build affordable housing.

The government doesn’t seem to be listening to tax payers - Bill 185 is a regressive plan. The rules keep changing. We need to preserve our farmland. Extreme weather has been plaguing the US this past month. Ontario needs to preserve its green space to lower GHG emissions and preserve our food security. Bill 185 ignores these key issues.