I would like to state my…

I would like to state my firm opposition to the amendments weakening the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System. Wetlands are perhaps our most important natural systems, cleaning our water, protecting against flooding, and providing great value socially, recreationally, and economically for performing their functions, yet the proposed changes appear to centre around removing their protections.

Severing a wetland from its surrounding landscape from a regulatory standpoint by eliminating complexing and severely reducing wetland buffers seems to attempt to handicap the finding of evidence for the system's importance. A significant series of wetlands assessed individually will of course not find any wetland that bestows all the benefits of the whole, which opens the former complex to elimination and destruction under the findings of a biased methodology reporting that the wetlands provided little to no benefit at all. This is no more true than saying that because no one doctor can cure all diseases, hospitals should be destroyed for being full of useless doctors. The reduction of wetland buffers also seems designed to understate the importance of wetlands by reducing the amount of land in their watersheds. If they are encroached on to within 30 metres and all previously protected land is developed, then the opportunity to see their benefits are reduced, and they will appear less important.

There is nothing wrong with valuing wetlands properly according to the services they provide. Attempting to obscure their value works against the best interest of the beneficiaries of wetland services, which is everyone in Ontario. We need to keep the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System, and do away with the proposed changes.