I am writing to express my…

I am writing to express my concerns to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. I have a number of concerns:
1) The Land Needs Assessment methodology seems very much needed, a standardized process that every municipality works through to figure out if an urban boundary expansion is supported. This proposal seems to weaken it by allowing up to 40 hectares of land to be included in our urban boundary piece by piece. It is not clear if the 40 hectares are capped or which entity is allowed to request the boundary expansion. Currently, the Lands Needs Assessment is done as part of a much larger process that makes more sense.
2) I do not support weakening Greenfield targets, we must intensify and increase density, this part is problematic. Hamilton can barely keep up with our aging infrastructure and to add more to service less people is not ideal.
3) Affordable housing is a huge issue we need to directly tackle and these proposed changes don't even mention how to increase affordability.
4) Removing any thoughtful mention of Climate Change in the plan. I can't even wrap my mind around this change - are we really at the point of that we are ignoring the impacts of Climate Change and the responsibilities of municipalities? I'm disappointed in the lack of foresight.
5) Provincially Significant Employment Zones - I would like to see our municipalities be allowed to highlight for the province all the employment zones to turn into PSEZ's. We need to protect our employment lands and ensure they stay that way. In Hamilton, some of our employment zones only have chunks of it suggested to become PSEZ's. We should have all the zones protected as PSEZ's.

Overall, our Growth Plan stems from intensive consulting with local councils, community members and stakeholders. To see this proposal to make such drastic changes so quickly after the Growth Plan was reviewed and updated in 2017 is problematic.

In summary, I think we need to dump this proposal. Keep the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe as is and only after widespread consultation with people in the area, should new proposals be introduced.
Thank you for your time.