I am not in support of this…

I am not in support of this proposal as this goes against environmental efforts to reduce emissions and build sustainable infrastructure throughout Ontario. Bill 212 proposes building Highway 413 through Ontario's greenbelt. If built, it will destroy forests and wetlands and imperil precious farmland. It threatens to extirpate the red-side dace, a fish listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act. It will incentivize car travel, jeopardizing Canada’s ability to meet its climate targets. If a mega-highways can be built through greenbelts, no forest in Canada is safe.

As a resident of Toronto, I would like to highlights the important of bike lane as they make our streets safe and provides access to sustainable and active transport. In the long term, more development can be created around the bike lanes, which will create a structure centered around their use. Having bike lanes helps Metrolinx and TTC in their goals of decreasing carbon emissions, and increasing the share of people biking to their stations by creating safe places where people want to bike. The City of Toronto public opinion and municipal government are strongly in support of municipal bike lanes, as well as municipal control over the process. The province stepping into the city's affairs in order to legislate specific design choices is a terrible overreach of their power. This also wastes public money, since the of city of Toronto already spent money building new bike lanes this year. It will waste the city's money to tear them out, and will unnecessarily harm public trust in government planning. Since the bike lanes were so recently built, tearing them out will unnecessarily damage the public's trust in the government to accomplish meaningful goals. I urge you to not move forward with this harmful proposal.