Re: ERO number019-4219 I…

Re: ERO number019-4219

I have now tried to wade through this extremely comprehensive list of proposed regulatory changes. I have had limited experience with environmental assessments in which I have participated as an interested citizen. Some of these, such as the EA done for York Region's proposed Water Reclamation Center impressed me as being both extensive and appropriate. Throughout my involvement with the consultants, for that project, I had an extremely high level of comfort that these experts clearly wanted to find an environmentally benign solution to a compelling problem. The entire exercise was done with honesty and integrity.

I'm not sure how they missed the pharmaceutical impact on Lake Simcoe, but believe it to be an honest oversight that thankfully was picked up by the Chippeaws of Georgina Island. When I compare this to the EA studies I have participated in with respect to the extension of Hwy 404 to Keswick and the Bradford, I see an entirely different picture.

While the Hwy 404 EA study was done with integrity and honest public consultation, the Bradford Bypass was an absolute sham! The current status of the Bradford Bypass project is even worse! Public consultation and information disclosure was pretty good for the Hwy 404 study but abysmal for the Bradford Bypass Project. The fact that MTO refused to reconsider the Ravenshoe Rd corridor for this project notwithstanding that they admitted in the test of their study report that the Bradford Bypass project would have a greater impact on the environment is incomprehensible! Further the consultants knowingly lied about the location of the extremely important historic Lower Landing because it stood in the way of their preferred route.

My impression is that MTO and the province essentially consider protection of our environment to be nothing more than an annoying, expensive set of procedural steps they must “tick off” before they can start construction along the route they intend to employ. The statutory requirement to consider reasonable alternatives, is totally ignored by MTO. Their intended highway takes precedence over virtually everything else, especially the environment.

I have also read the 1984 Hyw 89 Extension EAS which was ultimately withdrawn by the Minister of Transportation, apparently for fear that an independent Environmental Assessment Review Board would listen to the environmentalists and not approve the section of the highway that crossed the Holland River at Cooks Bay.

That fact the province now wishes to take further steps to streamline or simplify the environmental assessment statutory regime is nothing short of alarming!

What the province is now proposing strikes me as a series of further steps to gut the provinces' legislated protections of our environment. From what I can see, this process started many years ago when the province eliminated the independent Environmental Assessment Review Board.

I firmly believe because of climate change and dramatically increasing population densities, we must strengthen, rather than simplify our environmental protection legislative framework.

What we need is an all-party committee to conduct a full review of our environmental protection legislation. I have absolutely no confidence in leaving this extremely important task to the Ford Government. The fact that our premiere has the gall and ability, through the use of unprecedented retro-active legislation, to cause the Bradford Bypass to be built through an extremely sensitive part of our environment based on a 25 year old obsolete EA Approval is not only wrong, it's unconscionable!

While I fully appreciate that all I have said will fall on deaf ears, if nothing else, it will be on the public record.